don't get too excited
don't get too excited
Posted Jun 25, 2014 22:07 UTC (Wed) by Wol (subscriber, #4433)In reply to: don't get too excited by Cyberax
Parent article: US Supreme Court rules against software patents
> That is called 'a patent'.
Actually, it isn't. Or rather, the problem is that the protection granted by current patents is pretty poor - if your patent lasts 17 years from publication, and FDA trials take 15 years, then your protected period is 2 years ...
> Can you provide actual examples of pharma research? I do, since we work with drug discovery companies.
Not off the top of my head. But I have a strong personal interest in this field, and all the stuff I've seen says that the majority of Pharma R&D is minor variations on old drugs. Oh - and I get the impression you are in Eastern Europe? The proportion of R&D spent on blue-sky research is much higher in Europe that it is in America, as far as I can make out ...
And if you work with drug discovery companies, does that mean you're being fed a filtered view? Or do you personally actively pick up on anything you come across in the specialist or general media?
One of my favourite examples - aspirin. Which, because it's LONG out of patent, has only recently made a comeback as a drug for treating heart attacks, despite its proven ability to save lives and aid recovery. If your first heart attack kills you, it's not much use, true. But many (30-40%) of heart attacks follow a double-whammy pattern, a minor initial attack and a fatal big one several hours later. Take aspirin after the first attack and the second never happens. And your chances of full recovery from the first attack are much enhanced.
And, following the antics of NICE (the UK drug prescribing authority), it certainly seems as though there is an awful lot of anti-generic pressure in the industry as a whole. NICE has a habit of pushing for generics (not surprisingly) and there is a massive pushback. That said, my wife is chronically ill, and we make a point of requesting specific drugs - that happen to be patented. Not because we believe patented to be better, but generics are subtly different and have been widely reported as causing havoc with the drugs regime. It's change we don't want, not being pro/anti generics. The big problem with generics is that every time you get a new supply of drugs, the specific version can change with all the subtle differences that implies :-(
Cheers,
Wol
Posted Jun 25, 2014 22:25 UTC (Wed)
by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523)
[Link] (2 responses)
> Not off the top of my head. But I have a strong personal interest in this field, and all the stuff I've seen says that the majority of Pharma R&D is minor variations on old drugs.
Sometimes companies foray into areas covered with existing drugs and most of the time it ends badly. The most notable example are anti-blood-clotting drugs - there are no new drugs after tens of billions of dollars spent on their development.
>Oh - and I get the impression you are in Eastern Europe?
>The proportion of R&D spent on blue-sky research is much higher in Europe that it is in America, as far as I can make out ...
Posted Jun 26, 2014 10:30 UTC (Thu)
by roc (subscriber, #30627)
[Link]
Hmm. What about rivaroxaban? That's been getting regulatory approval within the last five years; do you not classify that as "new"?
Posted Jun 26, 2014 10:47 UTC (Thu)
by Wol (subscriber, #4433)
[Link]
The only real *new* drug is Levodopa, which was discovered in the 1960s. To the best of my knowledge ALL of the long-term drugs for Parkinsons are variants on it. But Levodopa is now deprecated (because it's out of patent ...)
And on this particular example I have first hand experience :-(
Cheers,
don't get too excited
It's close to 7-10 years. Typical time from the initial drug development to marketing is 10 years. Significantly extending the protection period won't generate much additional income, but it will destroy the generics market.
Totally and insanely incorrect. Most of R&D is done on _totally_ _new_ areas. Tweaking old drugs is simply not profitable for large-scale R&D, because old drugs already work.
Our company is distributed between continents, but our customers are almost all in the US.
Nope. Pharma companies trail only silicon companies in the amount of R&D - universally. Simply because pharma companies have to innovate or die: http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2009/07/08/how_much_...
don't get too excited
> drugs after tens of billions of dollars spent on their development.
don't get too excited
Wol