Pharma Blog Watch

The Reality of Cancer Research (In the Pipeline)
Responding to enthusiastic media coverage of new research on capsaicin-based vanilloid agonists in killing cancer cells, Derek Lowe writes that "all this is fine, until the word 'cure' starts being tossed around."

"You see, these studies are all on cell cultures. I've worked on several cancer research programs, and I'm sure that other readers who've done the same can back me up here: Unless you've seen cancer drug discovery work at close range, you may have no idea of just how many compounds work against cancer cells in a dish," he writes.

"We don't even bother looking at a compound unless it goes through cultured cell lines like a flaming sword. Problem is, a good number of those compounds will go through normal cells in the same fashion, which isn't exactly what the oncology market is looking for. And of the ones that are left, the ones that aren't hideous toxins, well, a lot of those hit the skids when they go into a live mouse model."

"AstraZeneca's drug Iressa is always useful to keep in mind. That one was going to be a huge hit, back when it was in development. But in real patients, well, for the vast majority of them, it just doesn't do much at all."