On September 17th, Michael Decker came to speak about the basics of the drug discovery process. He detailed the struggles of the drug process, expanding into the topics of the cost and amount of time that it takes to create just one drug. The multibillion dollar price tag and ten plus year commitment associated with this may seem like a turnoff to many, but in a world where people are sick, someone has to create the medicines that keep our world moving forward. Unfortunately, in the case of Alzheimer’s Disease (AD), Dr. Decker explains to us that many, if not almost all Alzheimer’s drugs fail, with a whopping 99.6% fail rate. There are no drugs on the market to treat this disease, so the article “Drug discovery and development: Role of basic biological research” by Richard Mohs and Nigel Greig, they suggest that drug companies will continue their research into AD because of the unmet need in the market. But is this true nowadays? This article was written in November 2017, and unfortunately just two months later, pharmaceutical giant Pfizer announcer they were dropping out of Alzheimer’s Disease research. Past speaker Meharvan Singh even went on to mention during his talk that there is no money in neuro drug development, due to the high costs and high failure rates, which is the reason why huge companies like Pfizer are giving up altogether. So while the paper by Mohs and Grieg has an optimistic outlook on the future of drug development, the reality of the situation is that a cure for Alzheimer’s may never even come.
A recent example would be the recent halting of studies on an Alzheimer's Disease drug that the biotech company Biogen has been working on, called aducanumab, which targeted beta-amyloid proteins. In the article “Biogen Halts Studies of Closely Watched Alzheimer’s Drug, a Blow to Hopes for New Treatment” written by Adam Feuerstein, he mentions that the study was ended during a Phase 3 clinical trial when it was shown unlikely to benefit patients when compared to the placebo. While this drug may have failed, it did bring new insight into the theory that beta-amyloids are responsible for causing Alzheimer’s disease. But this did not come without a cost, Biogen was betting heavily on this drug, and ended up losing heavily, with their stock price dropping almost by almost a third and Biogen losing sixteen billion dollars in market value, not to mention the time and money they put into the drug itself. This can be related back to the “fail fast, fail early” mantra from the Mohs and Grieg article. Although this did yield valuable information, it was not the result that anybody was looking for.
The drug development process is full of trials and tribulations, many of which Dr. Decker highlighted in his talk. But unfortunately, for AD, it seems to be all tribulations. When AD drugs continue to fail, companies continue to drop out of the race. All we can do is hope that a viable treatment comes along before all development halts. Dr. Decker mentioned that with humans having longer lifespans, the rate of Alzheimer’s Disease will just increase. The war against AD seems futile, but with more and more research being conducted there may be a chance of one day finding a cure for this debilitating disease.
Works Cited
Feuerstein, Adam. “Biogen Halts Studies of Closely Watched Alzheimer's Drug, a Blow to
Hopes for New Treatment.” Scientific American, STAT, 22 Mar. 2019, www.scientificamerican.com/article/biogen-halts-studies-of-closely-watched-alzheimers-drug-a-blow-to-hopes-for-new-treatment/.
Mohs, Richard C., and Nigel H. Grieg. “Drug Discovery and Development: Role of Basic
Biological Research.” Alzheimer's & Dementia Translational Research and Clinical Interventions, Alzheimer's Association, Nov. 2017, www.trci.alzdem.com/article/S2352-8737(17)30065-3/fulltext.
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