Biotech Values

[iwfal]

Unlike the failure of Cerovive which would have added billions of dollars of increased healthcare costs if they would have reached statistical significance in a clinically meaningless benefit and failure of the drug was not a tragedy, the failure of desmoteplase which has the potential to increase the quality of life of millions of future stroke patients and end up reducing healthcare costs because rehabilitation from stoke adds billions of dollars to the cost of healthcare and early reperfusion can reduce the cost of rehabilitation, desmoteplase failure would have been a tragedy.

Don't buy this. Any neuroprotectant, stroke or TBI, saves on rehab for a given patient if it actually works. But may still cost the economy as a whole more if it actually saves lives as well (just to leave them vegatative). For all of these drugs the largest hurdle is getting them into patients in a timely manner - to the extent that the don't do that they appear doomed to failure (e.g. most animal models for these drugs give the drug within a few hours of injury, but the trials are generally 6+ hours.) For instance, if Cerovive actually worked measurably (even if clinically unimportant) when given at 6+ hours, then it probably would have worked in a clinically important way at a post approval (no forms need to be signed) infusion time of, say, 3 hours.