Recent stories arising from medical
areas as diverse as breast cancer and Ebola illustrate the failures and
near-failures of drug discovery by for-profit pharmaceutical companies.
An article in SCIENCE (1) recounts the twists and
turns of the highly promising anti-cancer drug palbociclib. This agent selectively inhibits CDK4, a kinase that
is involved in cell cycle control and that is crucial to the growth of certain
cancers. The history of this drug goes back to the 1990s when it was developed
by researchers at Parke-Davis Co. When the giant pharmaceutical company Pfizer
acquired Parke-Davis in 2000 palbociclib was almost
dropped and its development was delayed for years during the various twists and
turns of Pfizer’s recent corporate history. Its re-emergence as a promising
drug for breast cancer is primarily due to several independent clinical
researchers who championed its use. This type of on-again off-again drug
research is all too common in ‘Big Pharma’ where science is often subverted by
marketing and corporate strategy issues.
The recent explosion of
concern regarding anti-Ebola drugs reflects another aspect of the failure of for-profit
major drug companies to deal with problems of great public health concern. As
stated nicely in a recent blog post (2) from the CSPO at Arizona State “when we rely on a market-based system to drive medical
research that may not be profitable in the short term or even medium term, that
system is unlikely to respond to potential future threats — no matter how high
the potential cost — if there is not a reasonable promise of economic return in
the end“. This of course exactly
describes the situation with Ebola as well as with many other diseases that
primarily affect less-developed countries and that thus do not provide the
prospect of lucrative profits.
The BBC website has
summarized recent efforts on Ebola drug development (3). Although several companies
are involved in this process, it is important to note that much of the early-phase
research on drugs for exotic diseases has been sponsored by governments. For
example, promising drugs for Marburg and Ebola viruses being developed by Sarepta
Therapeutics and Tekmira Pharmaceuticals, two small biotech companies, have
been sponsored by the US Dept. of Defense.
The role of governments in
developing innovative technology is often under-appreciated (4); in contrast
private companies (particularly pharmaceutical companies) use highly developed
public relations tools to claim a leading role in innovation. The emergence of
pandemics such as the current Ebola outbreak should be readily anticipated
based on the phenomenal increases in both population and mobility occurring in
Africa in recent years (5). However, it has been governments and non-profits
rather than Big Pharma that have led the way in preparing for such public
health emergencies. All of this inevitably leads to the conclusion that drug
discovery and development is too important to be driven solely by the quest for
corporate profits.
