Is The FDA the Problem?

A reader sends along this account of some speakers at last year's investment symposium from Agora Financial. One of the speakers was Juan Enriquez, and I thought that readers here might be interested in his perspective. First, the facts. According to Enriquez: Today, it costs 100,000 times less than it once did to create a three-dimensional map of a disease-causing protein There are about 300 times more of these disease proteins in databases now than in times past The number of drug-like chemicals per researcher has increased 800 times The cost to test a drug versus a protein has decreased ten-fold The technology to conduct these tests has gotten much quicker Now here’s Enriquez’s simple question: "Given all these advances, why haven’t we cured cancer yet? Why haven’t we cured Alzheimer’s? Why haven’t we cured Parkinson’s?" The answer likely lies in the bloated process and downright hostile-to-innovation climate for FDA drug approvals in this day and age... According to Enriquez, this climate has gotten so bad that major pharmaceuticals companies have begun shifting their primary focus from R&D of new drugs to increased marketing of existing drugs — and mergers and acquisitions. I have a problem with this point of view, assuming that it's been reported correctly. I'll interpret this as makes-a-good-speech exaggeration, but Enriquez himself has most certainly been around enough to realize that the advances that he speaks of are not, by themselves, en...
Source: In the Pipeline - Category: Chemists Tags: Drug Development Source Type: blogs