Alzheimer’s drug development ‘must speed up’
pharmafile | November 7, 2013 | News story | Research and Development, Sales and Marketing | Alzheimer's, CEO, drug development
Alzheimer’s drugs cost three times the industry average to produce, according to a new draft report – and the way they are developed must be radically shaken up to improve patient access.
The research, commissioned by the New York Academy of Sciences, suggests that reforming the way treatments for this branch of dementia move from bench to bedside would reduce costs and speed up their route to market.
It outlines ways to reduce the total bill for developing an effective Alzheimer’s treatment by $4 billion to what the report suggests is the industry average of $2 billion – and says this would help increase private investment.
Among the chief bottlenecks contributing to costs at present are what it calls ‘slow, inefficient’ clinical trials which retard progress in this therapy area.
If it were possible to develop a medicine that could slow or stop the disease by 2025, then $100 billion in healthcare spending could be saved over a 15-year period in the US alone, the report concludes.
Academy president Ellis Rubinstein said: “Progress in developing new therapies has been unacceptably slow, and so we must rethink how Alzheimer’s research is carried out so that we can accelerate our understanding of what causes this complex disease.”
The report – the final version of which is due to be published early next year – was discussed at this week’s ‘Alzheimer’s: Path to 2025’ summit, organised by the Academy, the Global CEO Initiative on Alzheimer’s Disease (CEOi) and the US National Institute on Ageing/National Institutes of Health.
Against a gloomy backdrop which suggests incidence of the disease is set to double by 2035 and triple by 2060 as populations age, the Economic Analysis of Opportunities to Accelerate Alzheimer’s R&D recommends:
- Developing reliable disease markers to predict the progression of Alzheimer’s disease in different patients and better match people with treatments likely to work for them
- Establishing global trial-ready cohorts of eligible participants as well as using adaptive trial designs that will enable the testing of multiple drugs, in combination, tailored for different at-risk populations
- Making data-sharing arrangements for companies to share pre-competitive research results so that other scientists can learn more rapidly how to slow or stop the disease
- Promoting public-private partnerships that pool resources from governments, academia, industry, and patient advocates to co-invest in development and testing.
Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia affect more than 35 million people worldwide, with associated health cost figures from 2010 of $600 billion.
There is currently no cure, and the difficulty of treating Alzheimer’s means that any change in the landscape – at however early a stage of research and without proof in humans – tends to be seized upon.
Scientists from the Medical Research Council last month announced that there was hope of a cure because their work suggested brain cell death can be prevented by a new compound – at least in mice with prion disease, another neurodegenerative disorder.
“Global leadership and collaboration across business and government are essential to drive co-ordinated action, promote rapid innovation, and spur the focus needed to achieve a means of prevention and effective diagnosis, treatment, and care for Alzheimer’s and dementia,” said George Vradenburg, convener of the CEOi.
In a sign that Alzheimer’s is being seen as an impending health crisis, the G8 group of the world’s most powerful economies is to hold its first-ever meeting on dementia in London next month.
Adam Hill
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