The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) is a multi-national trade agreement now being considered by 12 countries. In an insightful commentary in Research in Social and Administrative Pharmacy (RSAP), the ramifications of major components of the agreement are discussed, especially those potentially impacting the worldwide pharmaceutical industry.

More than 80 leading international pharmaceutical, generics, diagnostics and biotechnology companies, as well as key industry bodies, have come together to call on governments and industry to work in parallel in taking comprehensive action against drug-resistant infections - so-called 'superbugs' - with a joint declaration launched today at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

You grab for the cough syrup for some relief from that nasty lingering cold, what do you measure the dose with? Many of us use teaspoons or table spoons to measure out doses for ourselves and our children but this results in dosage errors. This new study finds that errors in estimating doses can be mitigated by changing the serving measurements on the dosage facts panel from teaspoons to milliliters.

The International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) proposes new rules that will require authors to share clinical trial data as a prerequisite for their manuscripts to be considered for publication. The goal is to improve the benefit to society from the efforts of patients who volunteer to participate in clinical trials.

Patients suffering organ failure caused by a common inflammatory condition could be helped by a new therapy. Scientists have discovered an experimental medicine that protects against organ damage caused by a condition called acute pancreatitis. The research offers hope for the illness, which has no current treatment, and which affects thousands of people in the UK each year and places a huge burden on intensive care facilities.

The first issue of Elsevier's new open access journal Contemporary Clinical Trials Communications features a new method to make cancer clinical trials more effective, a better way of determining whether a trial was successful and a dashboard that helps patients enroll in trials. The journal is a spin-off of the well-established title Contemporary Clinical Trials.

On September 21-23, 2015, the p-medicine consortium composed of 19 partner organisations from all over Europe and Japan came together for their final project meeting in Homburg/Saar, Germany. During the meeting, the project's final achievements were presented to representatives of the European Commission, the local government as well as interested companies, research institutions and patient/parents groups.