5 ms·

The First Deuterated Drug Arrives

66 points by adenadel 10y ago

refurb 10y ago
What's interesting is that Concert Pharmaceuticals (Derek mentions this in his post) has been working on this technology for the past two decades. I'm kind of surprised they weren't the first to market. Drug R&D is hard!
- chroem- 10y ago
  Everything is hard with software being a notable exception.
  - Neliquat 10y ago
    Boy have I got a bridg... err.. 'framework' to sell to you.
  - GenerocUsername 10y ago
    I don't know who you think you are. Coming on here and saying things like this. How dare you.
woofyman 10y ago
$60,000 usd a year list price.
- adenadel 10y ago
  To play the devil's advocate, there are 30,000 people in the US with Huntington's [0]. If all of them paid full price for the drug that comes out to 1.8B. Bringing a drug to market costs 2.5B [1]. In order to encourage drug development for rare diseases, there needs to be some financial reward. Often more than half of a drug's patent is gone by the time that the drug is approved. 0. http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/159552.php http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/159552.php 1. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/cost-to-develop-new-pharmaceutical-drug-now-exceeds-2-5b/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/cost-to-develop-n...
  - jcoffland 10y ago
    Drug developers have a strong incentive to overstate what they spent developing a drug. Since they are the source of these numbers, I suspect they are inflated. If you were to take all of the drugs a company developed during some time period and add up their reported development costs the total would likely far exceed the companies total expenditure.
    - JBReefer 10y ago
      That's a strong claim that you could probably support with data with little effort, but as it stands, it's conjecture. I do agree with your analysis, but it's a weak argument to incentive.
  - mikeash 10y ago
    Their potential market is worldwide, and getting your R&D money back in a year or so is extremely good. I'm pretty sure the $2.5 billion/drug includes R&D "wasted" on failed drugs too. The industry gets 20-30 new drugs approved per year, and spends around $60 billion per year developing them. I mention this because one could easily see that figure and think that they'd need to make, say, $25 billion just to break even after paying for all the drugs that never made it out of development.
pizza 10y ago
VMAT2 target has me considering some.. interesting.. hypothetical deuteronomical creations.
- throwanem 10y ago
  I like the pun, but Hamer's work isn't well supported. I won't even ask what you had in mind.
  - pizza 10y ago
    Hah, I hadn't even noticed that pun. I was thinking of the drug target. And maybe if Walter White would, in another universe, be cooking "heavy meth"
    - droopyEyelids 10y ago
      Heavy versions of most performance enhancers have been "available" for decades, for obvious reasons.
reasonattlm 10y ago
An interesting topic to look into is the effect of deuterium on longevity in various species. It appears to induce a form of hormesis at low levels (perhaps) or improve resistance of certain important cell structures to oxidative damage (perhaps). [1] The company Retrotope [2] is trying to do something with what is known of this biochemistry. Deuterated drugs after the fashion of the one in this article are probably not going to be delivering enough deuterium to trigger this sort of effect, however. [1]: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/bies.201600040/full http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/bies.201600040/fu... [2]: https://www.retrotope.com/ https://www.retrotope.com/
caycep 10y ago
as the article probably said..this is adding deuterium to an old drug that has been around for a while. The pharma for the old stuff is Lundborg, supposedly one of the "non-profit" pharmas focused on orphan drugs. Pricing is high, mostly due to supply constraints, so they say, but the foundation attached to the company gives patients some sort of financial advice. Basically, the drug induces a form of parkinsonism (hypokineticism) to combat conditions that cause hyperkineticism.
advisedwang 10y ago
I expect we will see a slew of out-of-patent drugs re-created with deuterium atoms for marginal clinical benefit and then sold under patent again.
- adenadel 10y ago
  That might happen, but nothing would stop people from using the much cheaper generic of the original drug.
  - colinbartlett 10y ago
    Nothing except their doctor recommending the more expensive name brand drug, which happens all the time. I'm sure there are many reasons why this happens including drug companies having cosy relationships with doctors and also consumer advertising causing patients to request specific drugs. Take Nexium.[1] I'm no expert, but I understand Nexium to be esomeprazole, the s-isomer of omeprazole which is to say it's a mirror image chemically. Yet it's the second most prescribed drug in America. 1. http://scienceblogs.com/denialism/2012/01/09/why-no-one-should-take-nexium/ http://scienceblogs.com/denialism/2012/01/09/why-no-one-shou...
    - LoSboccacc 10y ago
      and hospitals.
    - mikeash 10y ago
      If it's a prescription drug, then the doctor might write a prescription for the name brand drug. It's possible for a prescription not to allow a generic substitute, and it seems particularly easy to do in a case like this where the name-brand drug is not identical to the generic.
    - maxerickson 10y ago
      It's not the mirror image of omeprozle (Prilosec, which is both isomers), it's just manufactured so that only one isomer is present in the pills. The same gag with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levocetirizine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levocetirizine and cetirizine. Levocetirizine just became available OTC in the US and costs 3x more than generic cetirizine (for dubious benefit).
Pulcinella 10y ago
I'm interested in seeing how the patent issues turn out around reiterated drugs in the future. I predict that they will be and remain patentable. I'm no lawyer, but deuteration does not seem obvious. Yes the idea that you can swap out hydrogen for deuterium is obvious, but the idea that deuteration will have a meaningful effect on a specific drug is not. For some drugs it may do nothing while in others it will.
legulere 10y ago
When the drug finally gets metabolized, are there any effects of a higher presence of deuterium in the body to be expected?

66 points by adenadel 10y ago

What's interesting is that Concert Pharmaceuticals (Derek mentions this in his post) has been working on this technology for the past two decades. I'm kind of surprised they weren't the first to market. Drug R&D is hard!

chroem- 10y ago
Everything is hard with software being a notable exception.
- Neliquat 10y ago
  Boy have I got a bridg... err.. 'framework' to sell to you.
- GenerocUsername 10y ago
  I don't know who you think you are. Coming on here and saying things like this. How dare you.

woofyman 10y ago

$60,000 usd a year list price.

adenadel 10y ago
To play the devil's advocate, there are 30,000 people in the US with Huntington's [0]. If all of them paid full price for the drug that comes out to 1.8B. Bringing a drug to market costs 2.5B [1]. In order to encourage drug development for rare diseases, there needs to be some financial reward. Often more than half of a drug's patent is gone by the time that the drug is approved. 0. http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/159552.php http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/159552.php 1. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/cost-to-develop-new-pharmaceutical-drug-now-exceeds-2-5b/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/cost-to-develop-n...
- jcoffland 10y ago
  Drug developers have a strong incentive to overstate what they spent developing a drug. Since they are the source of these numbers, I suspect they are inflated. If you were to take all of the drugs a company developed during some time period and add up their reported development costs the total would likely far exceed the companies total expenditure.
  - JBReefer 10y ago
    That's a strong claim that you could probably support with data with little effort, but as it stands, it's conjecture. I do agree with your analysis, but it's a weak argument to incentive.
- mikeash 10y ago
  Their potential market is worldwide, and getting your R&D money back in a year or so is extremely good. I'm pretty sure the $2.5 billion/drug includes R&D "wasted" on failed drugs too. The industry gets 20-30 new drugs approved per year, and spends around $60 billion per year developing them. I mention this because one could easily see that figure and think that they'd need to make, say, $25 billion just to break even after paying for all the drugs that never made it out of development.

pizza 10y ago

VMAT2 target has me considering some.. interesting.. hypothetical deuteronomical creations.

throwanem 10y ago
I like the pun, but Hamer's work isn't well supported. I won't even ask what you had in mind.
- pizza 10y ago
  Hah, I hadn't even noticed that pun. I was thinking of the drug target. And maybe if Walter White would, in another universe, be cooking "heavy meth"
  - droopyEyelids 10y ago
    Heavy versions of most performance enhancers have been "available" for decades, for obvious reasons.

reasonattlm 10y ago

An interesting topic to look into is the effect of deuterium on longevity in various species. It appears to induce a form of hormesis at low levels (perhaps) or improve resistance of certain important cell structures to oxidative damage (perhaps). [1] The company Retrotope [2] is trying to do something with what is known of this biochemistry. Deuterated drugs after the fashion of the one in this article are probably not going to be delivering enough deuterium to trigger this sort of effect, however. [1]: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/bies.201600040/full http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/bies.201600040/fu... [2]: https://www.retrotope.com/ https://www.retrotope.com/

caycep 10y ago

as the article probably said..this is adding deuterium to an old drug that has been around for a while. The pharma for the old stuff is Lundborg, supposedly one of the "non-profit" pharmas focused on orphan drugs. Pricing is high, mostly due to supply constraints, so they say, but the foundation attached to the company gives patients some sort of financial advice. Basically, the drug induces a form of parkinsonism (hypokineticism) to combat conditions that cause hyperkineticism.

advisedwang 10y ago

I expect we will see a slew of out-of-patent drugs re-created with deuterium atoms for marginal clinical benefit and then sold under patent again.

adenadel 10y ago
That might happen, but nothing would stop people from using the much cheaper generic of the original drug.
- colinbartlett 10y ago
  Nothing except their doctor recommending the more expensive name brand drug, which happens all the time. I'm sure there are many reasons why this happens including drug companies having cosy relationships with doctors and also consumer advertising causing patients to request specific drugs. Take Nexium.[1] I'm no expert, but I understand Nexium to be esomeprazole, the s-isomer of omeprazole which is to say it's a mirror image chemically. Yet it's the second most prescribed drug in America. 1. http://scienceblogs.com/denialism/2012/01/09/why-no-one-should-take-nexium/ http://scienceblogs.com/denialism/2012/01/09/why-no-one-shou...
  - LoSboccacc 10y ago
    and hospitals.
  - mikeash 10y ago
    If it's a prescription drug, then the doctor might write a prescription for the name brand drug. It's possible for a prescription not to allow a generic substitute, and it seems particularly easy to do in a case like this where the name-brand drug is not identical to the generic.
  - maxerickson 10y ago
    It's not the mirror image of omeprozle (Prilosec, which is both isomers), it's just manufactured so that only one isomer is present in the pills. The same gag with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levocetirizine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levocetirizine and cetirizine. Levocetirizine just became available OTC in the US and costs 3x more than generic cetirizine (for dubious benefit).

Pulcinella 10y ago

I'm interested in seeing how the patent issues turn out around reiterated drugs in the future. I predict that they will be and remain patentable. I'm no lawyer, but deuteration does not seem obvious. Yes the idea that you can swap out hydrogen for deuterium is obvious, but the idea that deuteration will have a meaningful effect on a specific drug is not. For some drugs it may do nothing while in others it will.

legulere 10y ago

When the drug finally gets metabolized, are there any effects of a higher presence of deuterium in the body to be expected?