Non-Profits Fund For-Profit Drug Research: Why Is It Happening?
This subscription-only story in Friday’s Wall Street Journal on Friday is an eyebrow-raiser:
Why Nonprofits Fund For-Profit Companies Doing Drug Research
January 26, 2007; Page B1
Science has made paralyzed rats walk, cured mice of cancer and eliminated Alzheimer’s in more lab rodents than you can count. Human patients? Not so much.“There’s frustration that developments from academic labs don’t get picked up by [drug and biotech] companies,” says Dayton Coles. As a board member of the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation, he has seen promising discovery after promising discovery emerge from the university labs that JDRF has funded, but none has turned into a cure for type-1 diabetes, which his daughter has.
Fed up with breakthroughs that fill journals rather than medicine chests, private foundations and charities that have traditionally funded academic scientists have started doing the once-unthinkable: writing checks for millions of dollars to for-profit companies.
It’s a sign of desperation. One reason there have been so few drug breakthroughs lately is that the profit motive actually works against the development of new pharmaceuticals. Drug companies suffer from blockbuster-itis, the belief that only billion-dollar almost-sure things need apply for development. As a result, even the most brilliant discovery may not be translated into a drug unless it has 10-figure sales potential. Also, short time horizons on the part of venture capitalists, who generally want to see their biotech bets pay off in three years, don’t mesh well with the lengthy drug-development process.
But wait a minute: Why does Big Pharma insist on blockbusters only? And why do VCs have short biotech/pharma time horizon? Answer: The Food and Drug Administration, whose approval process has long since become too unwieldy, too time-consuming, and too lacking in compassion.
Lacking compassion? Heck yes. The safe answer at FDA, even there is a 1 in a million chance of problems, is to say no — never mind that thousands of lives may be saved or the quality of life of thousands or millions of others immeasurably improved. Some kind of fundamental reform is needed — badly.
Tom, what exactly are you saying? I worked in the Yale Corporate and Professional Foundation Relations office for a couple of years and saw the money coming in for drug trials. I get that part re: academia and what it does and how it does it and the variety of funders. What are you hoping will happen?
Comment by Jill — January 30, 2007 @ 11:17 am
#1, Jill, there’s a fundamental imabalance between risk and reward that FDA needs to decide in favor of people who want unapproved treatement, esp in terminal cases.
And the approval process in general takes too long.
Comment by TBlumer — January 30, 2007 @ 12:21 pm
The reason the FDA is unwieldy, slow, and overcautious: trial lawyers. Tort reform would fix alot of this. Loser pays would fix even more.
Comment by Joe C. — February 1, 2007 @ 7:10 am
#3, Absolutely agree.
Comment by TBlumer — February 1, 2007 @ 7:13 am
Well, I am sensing that we could have a serious debate here (as in, more heated or intense) because, although I want people to have access to unapproved treatment, I don’t necessarily want that treatment approved. There’s reason it remains unapproved, in some circumstances. As for tort reform and the FDA, I pray that no one who feels that way ever ends up being the victim of a medmal or similar tort.
Comment by Jill — February 1, 2007 @ 11:25 am