News from the EMA - Volume 30, Issue

February 26, 2021 – EMA has recommended granting a marketing authorisation in the European Union (EU) for the first treatment that can be given orally to patients with certain types of spinal muscular atrophy (SMA), a rare and often fatal genetic…

Journal Watch - Volume 21, Issue

Improving the credibility of reporting industry-sponsored research Reports of ghostwriting, guest authorship, selective or biased disclosure of research results, and inaccurate or incomplete reporting of potential conflicts of interest have damaged…

Veterinary Medical Writing - Volume 28, Issue

Like many medical writers, I started in another career first. For me, it was practising veterinary medicine in a clinic, then going into clinical research in humans, and then on to medical writing. Designing clinical trials, sample size…

Digital Communication - Volume 33, Issue

Section Editor: Nicole Bezuidenhout Purr-fecting translation: Unleashing the power of computer-assisted translation (CAT) tools Author: Natasha Grande de França Medical translations are fundamental, and precision is at the core of this work. Any…

Immuno-oncology: Harnessing our immune system to fight cancer - Volume 27, Issue

The history of immunotherapy to treat cancer began in 1891 when the American surgeon William Coley performed intra-tumoural injections with inactivated bacteria in patients with advanced sarcoma, in an attempt to stimulate anti-tumour immunity.…

Medical Communications and Writing for Patients - Volume 33, Issue

Section Editor: Lisa Chamberlain James

Involving patients in company-sponsored medical publications: Learning from collaboration with a patient advocacy group to engage patient authors

Authors: Aki Yoshikawa, Atsuko Iwata, Miho Hatano, Yuko Koji…

Innovative use of master protocols for pivotal studies in rare diseases - Volume 34, Issue

Recent years have seen the development of clinical study protocols that introduce more complex design features into the usual gold-standard randomised controlled trials (RCTs). Complex protocols are potentially useful for drug evaluation in the…

Changing methods to assess targeted therapies in oncology - Volume 27, Issue

New methods have been developed to evaluate targeted therapies, since the classic sequence – phase I, toxicity; phase II, efficacy; phase III, comparison with standard treat ment – is no longer effective for evaluating these new treatments. In…

Writing for lay audiences - Volume 24, Issue

For most of us, medical writing is highly technical. We prepare regulatory or clinical documents or write materials targeted to medical doctors. Medical writing for lay audiences is different, and it does not come naturally to most of us because…

President’s Message - Volume 33, Issue

Welcome to the latest issue of Medical Writing. Following our record-breaking Spring conference in Valencia, Spain, which saw an unprecedented number of attendees, I am both humbled and excited to address you as the new President of EMWA. The…