Pharma Blog Watch

Cancer Drug Candidates (Xcovery Blog)
In response to recently released long-term data on Novartis' Gleevec, Tim Gallagher writes about other drugs in development to treat chronic myeloid leukemia. "Gleevec is being followed by nilotinib [made by Novartis] and dasatanib [made by Bristol-Myers Squibb]," he continues. "What I can't make sense of, though, is the choice of this disease (and these drug targets) as the main focus of a number of other biotech companies."

"I understand and appreciate the scientific merit, and there is perhaps a business boost thru the validation that the preceeding therapies provide, but just off the top of my head, I can name several entrants," including Ariad, Chemgenex, Innovive and Merck. "I really hope this effort results in the eradication of the disease, but surely, even if that is accomplished, three to five companies will swing hard and create a drug therapy, but ultimately wish that they'd spent their time on something else instead of coming in third or fourth in a two-horse race."

"Is this a call for government regulation of R&D targets? Not quite, especially since I'm a raging libertarian, but you can't help but make parallels to the days before government regulation of the electricity distribution business (early 1900s) when as many as 20 different companies' wires serviced some neighborhoods."