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I would also like to recommend this Nature article, from August 2016, on the same Drugs for Neglected Diseases initiative (DNDi) discussed here. "Busting the b

I would also like to recommend this Nature article, from August 2016, on the same Drugs for Neglected Diseases initiative (DNDi) discussed here. "Busting the billion-dollar myth: how to slash the cost of drug development" https://www.nature.com/news/busting-the-billion-dollar-myth-how-to-slash-the-cost-of-drug-development-1.20469 https://www.nature.com/news/busting-the-billion-dollar-myth-... > In just over a decade, the group has earned approval for six treatments, tackling sleeping sickness, malaria, Chagas’ disease and a form of leishmaniasis called kala-azar. And it has put another 26 drugs into development. It has done this with US$290 million — about one-quarter of what a typical pharmaceutical company would spend to develop just one drug. … In that vein, the DNDi has started research on alternatives to pricey drugs for hepatitis C…

chimeracoder 9y ago
Not to discount the significance of providing new treatments for things like malaria and sleeping sickness, but that's a pretty different category of problem altogether. The model described in that article is aimed at solving a different issue: providing medications for treating illnesses that are largely (though not exclusively) found in the developing world, and for which there is little investment from existing pharmaceutical R&D centers[0]. By contrast, Hepatitis C is the most deadly infectious disease in the US (and is comparably bad in Europe - arguably worse, actually due to inferior treatment options at the moment compared to the US). The cure for Hepatitis C came from a US-based company, out of research conducted on US patients and funded largely by the US pharmaceutical market. You wouldn't see groups like the DNDi tackling that kind of work, because they have vastly fewer resources than larger players do, and they ultimately wouldn't be able to compete, nor would they be able to establish distribution in the markets where they would need to have an impact[1]. Now that chronic Hepatitis C is a curable[2] disease, it's not surprising that other players will focus on providing cheaper alternatives to the treatment course, but again, that's a different problem from what the large pharmaceutical companies in the US and Europe solve. [0] The US is the largest of these, producing half of the world's R&D medical and pharmaceutical research, and Europe is another hub. China and India are the fastest growing, but have only been players on this scale in the last few years. [1] Producing the medication is, in some ways, the "easy" part - actually ensuring that it reaches the patients who need it is the really difficult part, and honestly the more impressive aspect of DNDi's sort of work. [2] Expensive, but curable
refurb 9y ago
It has done this with US$290 million — about one-quarter of what a typical pharmaceutical company would spend to develop just one drug What a poorly researched article. Of course they have. If you only measure the successful drugs, the cost of R&D is much lower. The question is, how do you identify those drugs? Plus, DNDi is not creating brand new molecules. Their molecules are either:(1) old drugs that we already know work but were never formally approved, (2) cast-off drugs where someone already spent a shit-ton of money, but never took them to the finish line or (3) me-too drugs, where they just tweak a known drug. All of those are much lower risk than creating a brand new drug with a new MOA. When they come up with a new drug with a truly novel mechanism, then we can find out how much it cost them. Derek Lowe from the "In the pipeline" blog put it well: "As pointed out in that previous post, the initiative, for the most part, is repurposing drugs that were discovered and at least partially developed by someone else, using someone else’s time, money, expertise and infrastructure."[1] [1]http://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2016/08/26/gosh-fellows-theres-a-better-way http://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2016/08/26/gos...
- jopsen 9y ago
  Isn't most drug developments just incremental improvements on previous drugs? Don't most drug companies stand on the shoulders of giants, starting of from public basic research?
  - refurb 9y ago
    It's very rare that someone does everything from the basic science to approval. However, there are varying degrees of incremental. I would say DNDi is on the very incremental end.

chimeracoder 9y ago

Not to discount the significance of providing new treatments for things like malaria and sleeping sickness, but that's a pretty different category of problem altogether. The model described in that article is aimed at solving a different issue: providing medications for treating illnesses that are largely (though not exclusively) found in the developing world, and for which there is little investment from existing pharmaceutical R&D centers[0]. By contrast, Hepatitis C is the most deadly infectious disease in the US (and is comparably bad in Europe - arguably worse, actually due to inferior treatment options at the moment compared to the US). The cure for Hepatitis C came from a US-based company, out of research conducted on US patients and funded largely by the US pharmaceutical market. You wouldn't see groups like the DNDi tackling that kind of work, because they have vastly fewer resources than larger players do, and they ultimately wouldn't be able to compete, nor would they be able to establish distribution in the markets where they would need to have an impact[1]. Now that chronic Hepatitis C is a curable[2] disease, it's not surprising that other players will focus on providing cheaper alternatives to the treatment course, but again, that's a different problem from what the large pharmaceutical companies in the US and Europe solve. [0] The US is the largest of these, producing half of the world's R&D medical and pharmaceutical research, and Europe is another hub. China and India are the fastest growing, but have only been players on this scale in the last few years. [1] Producing the medication is, in some ways, the "easy" part - actually ensuring that it reaches the patients who need it is the really difficult part, and honestly the more impressive aspect of DNDi's sort of work. [2] Expensive, but curable

refurb 9y ago

It has done this with US$290 million — about one-quarter of what a typical pharmaceutical company would spend to develop just one drug What a poorly researched article. Of course they have. If you only measure the successful drugs, the cost of R&D is much lower. The question is, how do you identify those drugs? Plus, DNDi is not creating brand new molecules. Their molecules are either:(1) old drugs that we already know work but were never formally approved, (2) cast-off drugs where someone already spent a shit-ton of money, but never took them to the finish line or (3) me-too drugs, where they just tweak a known drug. All of those are much lower risk than creating a brand new drug with a new MOA. When they come up with a new drug with a truly novel mechanism, then we can find out how much it cost them. Derek Lowe from the "In the pipeline" blog put it well: "As pointed out in that previous post, the initiative, for the most part, is repurposing drugs that were discovered and at least partially developed by someone else, using someone else’s time, money, expertise and infrastructure."[1] [1]http://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2016/08/26/gosh-fellows-theres-a-better-way http://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2016/08/26/gos...

jopsen 9y ago
Isn't most drug developments just incremental improvements on previous drugs? Don't most drug companies stand on the shoulders of giants, starting of from public basic research?
- refurb 9y ago
  It's very rare that someone does everything from the basic science to approval. However, there are varying degrees of incremental. I would say DNDi is on the very incremental end.