Merck's Drug Development in The New Yorker

The New Yorker has an article about Merck's discovery and development of suvorexant, their orexin inhibitor for insomnia. It also goes into the (not completely reassuring) history of zolpidem (known under the brand name of Ambien), which is the main (and generic) competitor for any new sleep drug. The piece is pretty accurate about drug research, I have to say: John Renger, the Merck neuroscientist, has a homemade, mocked-up advertisement for suvorexant pinned to the wall outside his ground-floor office, on a Merck campus in West Point, Pennsylvania. A woman in a darkened room looks unhappily at an alarm clock. It’s 4 a.m. The ad reads, “Restoring Balance.” The shelves of Renger’s office are filled with small glass trophies. At Merck, these are handed out when chemicals in drug development hit various points on the path to market: they’re celebrations in the face of likely failure. Renger showed me one. Engraved “MK-4305 PCC 2006,” it commemorated the day, seven years ago, when a promising compound was honored with an MK code; it had been cleared for testing on humans. Two years later, MK-4305 became suvorexant. If suvorexant reaches pharmacies, it will have been renamed again—perhaps with three soothing syllables (Valium, Halcion, Ambien). “We fail so often, even the milestones count for us,” Renger said, laughing. “Think of the number of people who work in the industry. How many get to develop a drug that goes all the way? Probably fewer than ten p...
Source: In the Pipeline - Category: Chemists Tags: Drug Development Source Type: blogs