Biotech Values

[Preciouslife1]

The 13th Congress of the European Hematology Association (EHA) in Copenhagen (June 12-15, 2008) will be remembered as yet another successful event in the annals of EHA congress.
The meeting attracted over 6600 delegates from 103 countries, who enjoyed a wide ranging scientific program of the highest quality.

http://www.ehaweb.org/eha/congress/previous_congresses/13th_congress_copenhagen/abstracts_2008

Dr M Greaves, from the University of Aberdeen, addressed both
the possible tensions and opportunities for collaboration at the EHA annual meeting in June 2008.
He began by quoting David
Blumenthal’s statement from the New England Journal of
Medicine: ‘when a great profession and the forces of capitalism interact, drama is the likely result’. He pointed out that research and development is declining in the industry due to a combination of patent expiration and generic competition, together with the huge costs involved in bringing new drugs to the market. It is predicted that between 2007 and 2012, $ 67 billion will be lost from the top pharmaceutical companies in the USA…
Drug costs are now a huge issue for society, especially when
linked to efficacy. It is quite amazing when a number of drugs
with similar modes of action, but different development histories, are similarly priced without any regard to their research and development costs!
Tyrosine Kinase inhibitors (TKI’s) are examples of drugs which have totally changed the outlook for patients with Chronic Myeloid Leukemia (CML). However this disease has been transformed into a chronic illness and thus patient numbers are accumulating.
It is estimated that in the USA there soon will be
250,000 patients alive with CML, representing an annual cost
somewhere in the region of € 7,5 billion for TKI’s. While the
FDA does not take cost into account, countries – for example
the UK - restrict new agents on the basis of cost-effectiveness, often resulting in a public outcry!
With other expensive drugs, efficacy is difficult to demonstrate.
The FDA approved a cholesterol-lowering agent in 2002 after a
small number of clinical trials, which included 3,900 patients!
In the absence of proven efficacy against heart attacks the drug earned billions of dollars for the company, presumably due to the robust advertising campaign. We would all agree (as mentioned in a previous newsletter) that all clinical trials should be registered and the results, whether favourable or not, be made available to the public.
Finally I am always intrigued by serendipity, especially in medicine.
Although we live in an age of ‘certainty’ and people speak
about focused research, it remains that many great medical
developments still happen by chance and hopefully will continue
to do so in the future.
Shaun Mc Cann
Editor in Chief

List of abstracts from the 13th Congress of the EHA
Poster session I
17:45-19:00 Novel therapies, drug resistance and pharmacology I
17:45-19:00 IN VITRO AND IN VIVO PROPERTIES OF PT-401, A NOVEL ERYTHROPOIETIN FUSION PROTEIN 0288 J. Sytkowski, J.Y. Jeong, K.L. Davis, A.L. Socha, H.J. Gomez (Boston, MA, United States of America)
http://www.ehaweb.org/eha/congress/previous_congresses/13th_congress_copenhagen/abstracts_2008