2 ms·

"If US had a patent law like India, they would discover many more drugs"

9 points by denzil_correa 12y ago

dalke 12y ago
I don't see any evidence that India's pharmacetical industry is finding more drug than the US one. According to http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15115225 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15115225 , "most new drugs [in the Indian pharmaceutical] are not major therapeutic advances", so I don't see that the patent law makes much of a difference. This link says "FDA's own data says 76% of drug patents in the US are for new forms of existing drugs. I pointed out to them that they were giving the same number of years under patent for an original new molecule as for new forms of an existing molecule. Companies make the same amount of money by tweaking existing molecules. So what's their incentive to discover new molecules?" I wonder if this is in reference to the FDA study from 1989 to 2000, which is mentioned in http://pcij.org/blog/wp-docs/Changing_Patterns_of_Pharmaceutical_Innovation.pdf http://pcij.org/blog/wp-docs/Changing_Patterns_of_Pharmaceut...: > From 1989 to 2000, the FDA gave a priority review to 24% of NDAs, which appeared to provide clinical improvement over the products available at the time of application. It assigned the remaining 76% to the standard review track, indicating that these drugs did not appear to provide significant clinical improvement over marketed products in one of the four recognized ways mentioned above. It goes on to observe reasons for variations in the formulation "Although such medicines do not make important clinical advances, they increase physicians’ prescribing choices, thus enabling them to match the drug to the needs of the patient. In some cases, modified drugs enhance patients’ convenience.", and generally agrees that there is inventive to meet Wall St. demands for growth by developing more variations. Still, it doesn't seem that Indian patent law leads to more drug discovery, in the sense of drugs that are new drug entities.

9 points by denzil_correa 12y ago

dalke 12y ago

I don't see any evidence that India's pharmacetical industry is finding more drug than the US one. According to http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15115225 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15115225 , "most new drugs [in the Indian pharmaceutical] are not major therapeutic advances", so I don't see that the patent law makes much of a difference. This link says "FDA's own data says 76% of drug patents in the US are for new forms of existing drugs. I pointed out to them that they were giving the same number of years under patent for an original new molecule as for new forms of an existing molecule. Companies make the same amount of money by tweaking existing molecules. So what's their incentive to discover new molecules?" I wonder if this is in reference to the FDA study from 1989 to 2000, which is mentioned in http://pcij.org/blog/wp-docs/Changing_Patterns_of_Pharmaceutical_Innovation.pdf http://pcij.org/blog/wp-docs/Changing_Patterns_of_Pharmaceut...: > From 1989 to 2000, the FDA gave a priority review to 24% of NDAs, which appeared to provide clinical improvement over the products available at the time of application. It assigned the remaining 76% to the standard review track, indicating that these drugs did not appear to provide significant clinical improvement over marketed products in one of the four recognized ways mentioned above. It goes on to observe reasons for variations in the formulation "Although such medicines do not make important clinical advances, they increase physicians’ prescribing choices, thus enabling them to match the drug to the needs of the patient. In some cases, modified drugs enhance patients’ convenience.", and generally agrees that there is inventive to meet Wall St. demands for growth by developing more variations. Still, it doesn't seem that Indian patent law leads to more drug discovery, in the sense of drugs that are new drug entities.