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James,
Speaking as an industry scientist -- which doesn't mean that I would be inclined to defend everything the industry does -- I am a bit surprised if the industry has indeed been asking for the creation of this center.
Certainly the industry has been using the knowledge created with the support of the NIH and other organizations: We would hardly be acting responsibly if we didn't. (The potential industrial usefulness of research is often the motivation for public funding, anyway.) But when it comes to drug discovery screening in the academic world, many people in pharmaceutical industry are very skeptic, and not entirely without reason. I've seen a fair number of cases in which talented scientists with a good screening lab pursued an excellent idea, and then picked the worst possible readout for a screening assay (fluorescence intensity with UV excitation, to wit), or failed to give enough thought to setting up a profiling cascade. And the selected leads would often raise eyebrows among industry chemists.
Lack of experience explains a lot. I fear there is also a problem of academics underestimating the sheer difficulty of drug discovery and being too dismissive of the knowledge base built up by industry scientists. This makes them prepared to repeat every painful mistake the industry ever made. (And it's not that we have been that brilliant, I often feel we invested too little in developing the methodology in a systematic way.) If this initiative, about which I am otherwise agnostic, can help to improve the exchange of drug-discovery know-how, then some good may come from it. On the other hand, I wonder how well government officials will cope with managing drug discovery programs, knowing that this often comes down to finding the courage to admit that yet another multi-million investment has failed to deliver and needs to be scrapped. It's already though enough if you don't have to justify it to the taxpayers.
Re: Drugs, nobody can deny that drug overconsumption is a problem, and we need more investment in treatments for tropical and neglected disease. But it goes a bit too far to attack drugs for mental illness as failing to target "really serious" illness, or to describe them as toys for the rich... AFAIK a shockingly high fraction of homeless people in the USA has been diagnosed with mental illness, lack of treatment contributing to social isolation, social isolation reinforcing mental illness.
Best Regards,
Emmanuel
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Emmanuel Gustin, Tel. (+32) 14 64 1586, e-mail: [log in to unmask]
-----Original Message-----
From: Confocal Microscopy List [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of James Pawley
Sent: zondag 23 januari 2011 18:49
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: why the elimination of NCRR in popular press
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I know that, as I used to run such a facility, I am supposed to talk
about the sad demise of NCRR. But what really annoys me is, that
after decades of mining NIH research for every possible drug, and on
the basis of this having become the most profitable segment of the
stock market (with the possible exception of "defence"), the
pharmaceutical industry has now had the nerve to prevail on its
clients in government to do even more of their drug discovery for
them.
And idea comes from the same guys who otherwise never tire of
claiming that Government can never do anything useful.
It seems not to have occurred to anyone that the drugs are not "good"
in themselves. They are only useful if they cure a disease (without
too many "side-effects"). And diseases have causes other than lack of
drugs. Given that the massive use of prescription drugs in the US has
produced a life expectancy about the same as that of Cuba (where they
use far fewer drugs), maybe we have too many drugs now. In fact, in
the US prescription drugs now surpass illegal chemicals as drugs of
abuse.
Perhaps if we put a little more money into removing the nasty
chemicals from our air and water or worked a little bit to give
ordinary people some realistic hope for the future we might not need
so many pharmaceuticals (the most profitable drugs being "mood
enhancers" like Soma in Brave New World.).
If this institute were to be dedicated to the development of drugs
aimed to treat of really serious diseases such as malaria or Chagas
or Dengue or for that matter, any "unprofitable" disease, I might
reconsider... But this seems not to be on the menu.
Sorry for the vent, but perhaps we will be more successful in trying
to save NCRR by attaching this new handout to the rich than by merely
pointing out NCRR's many past achievements.
Jim P.
***************************************************************************
Prof. James B. Pawley, Ph.
608-238-3953
21. N. Prospect Ave. Madison, WI 53726 USA
[log in to unmask]
3D Microscopy of Living Cells Course, June 11-23, 2011, UBC, Vancouver Canada
Info: http://www.3dcourse.ubc.ca/ Applications due by March 15, 2011
"If it ain't diffraction, it must be statistics." Anon.
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>To join, leave or search the confocal microscopy listserv, go to:
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>
>Over breakfast read the front page print version of this article in
>The New York Times which explains why the NCRR is being eliminated
>this year.
>
>http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/23/health/policy/23drug.html
>
>from toward the end:
>"For the plan to go into effect by October, the administration must
>by law get rid of one of the 27 centers and institutes already in
>existence at the N.I.H. - something that has never been done before.
>So the administration plans to downgrade the National Center for
>Research Resources, in part by giving some of its functions to the
>new drug center."
>
>
>entire online version of article:
>Federal Research Center Will Help Develop Medicines
>By GARDINER HARRIS
>Published: January 22, 2011
>
>
>The Obama administration has become so concerned about the slowing
>pace of new drugs coming out of the pharmaceutical industry that
>officials have decided to start a billion-dollar government drug
>development center to help create medicines.
>
>Creating a drug development center is a signature effort of Dr.
>Francis S. Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health.
>
>The new effort comes as many large drug makers, unable to find
>enough new drugs, are paring back research. Promising discoveries in
>illnesses like depression and Parkinson's that once would have led
>to clinical trials are instead going unexplored because companies
>have neither the will nor the resources to undertake the effort.
>
>The initial financing of the government's new drug center is
>relatively small compared with the $45.8 billion that the industry
>estimates it invested in research in 2009. The cost of bringing a
>single drug to market can exceed $1 billion, according to some
>estimates, and drug companies have typically spent twice as much on
>marketing as on research, a business model that is increasingly
>suspect.
>
>The National Institutes of Health has traditionally focused on basic
>research, such as describing the structure of proteins, leaving
>industry to create drugs using those compounds. But the drug
>industry's research productivity has been declining for 15 years,
>"and it certainly doesn't show any signs of turning upward," said
>Dr. Francis S. Collins, director of the institutes.
>
>The job of the new center, to be called the National Center for
>Advancing Translational Sciences, is akin to that of a home seller
>who spruces up properties to attract buyers in a down market. In
>this case the center will do as much research as it needs to do so
>that it can attract drug company investment.
>
>That means that in some cases, the center will use one of the
>institutes' four new robotic screeners to find chemicals that affect
>enzymes and might lead to the development of a drug or a cure. In
>other cases, the center may need to not only discover the right
>chemicals but also perform animal tests to ensure that they are safe
>and even start human trials to see if they work. All of that has
>traditionally been done by drug companies, not the government.
>
>"None of this is intended to be competitive with the private
>sector," Dr. Collins said. "The hope would be that any project that
>reaches the point of commercial appeal would be moved out of the
>academic support line and into the private sector."
>
>Whether the government can succeed where private industry has failed
>is uncertain, officials acknowledge, but they say doing nothing is
>not an option. The health and human services secretary, Kathleen
>Sebelius, sent a letter to Congress on Jan. 14 outlining the plan to
>open the new drug center by October - an unusually rapid turnaround
>for an idea first released with little fanfare in December.
>
>Creating the center is a signature effort of Dr. Collins, who once
>directed the agency's Human Genome Project. Dr. Collins has been
>predicting for years that gene sequencing will lead to a vast array
>of new treatments, but years of effort and tens of billions of
>dollars in financing by drug makers in gene-related research has
>largely been a bust.
>
>As a result, industry has become far less willing to follow the
>latest genetic advances with expensive clinical trials. Rather than
>wait longer, Dr. Collins has decided that the government can start
>the work itself.
>
>"I am a little frustrated to see how many of the discoveries that do
>look as though they have therapeutic implications are waiting for
>the pharmaceutical industry to follow through with them," he said.
>
>Dr. Collins's ability to conceive and create such a center in a few
>short months would have been impossible for most of his
>predecessors, who had nice offices but little power. But Congress in
>recent years has invested real budgetary and administrative
>authority in the director's office, and Dr. Collins is the first to
>fully use these new powers.
>
>Under the plan, more than $700 million in research projects already
>under way at various institutes and centers would be brought
>together at the new center. But officials hope that the prospect of
>finding new drugs will lure Congress into increasing the center's
>financing well beyond $1 billion.
>
>Hopes of new money may be optimistic. Republicans in the House have
>promised to cut the kind of discretionary domestic spending that
>supports the health institutes, and officials are already bracing
>for significant cuts this year. But Dr. Collins has hinted that he
>is willing to cannibalize other parts of the health institutes to
>bring more resources to the new center.
>
>"There are some people that would say this is not the time to do
>something bold and ambitious because the budget is so tight," he
>said. "But we would be irresponsible not to take advantage of
>scientific opportunity, even if it means tightening in other places."
>
>For the plan to go into effect by October, the administration must
>by law get rid of one of the 27 centers and institutes already in
>existence at the N.I.H. - something that has never been done before.
>So the administration plans to downgrade the National Center for
>Research Resources, in part by giving some of its functions to the
>new drug center.
>
>Researchers and staff members connected to the research resources
>center have inundated a complaint blog about the coming change. Mark
>O. Lively, a professor of biochemistry at Wake Forest University and
>a member of an advisory council to the research resources center,
>said that he could not understand why the administration was moving
>so quickly with its plans.
>
>"And the N.I.H. is not likely to be very good at drug discovery, so
>why are they doing this?" Dr. Lively asked.
>
>But Dr. Garret A. FitzGerald, a professor of medicine and
>pharmacology at the University of Pennsylvania, said the new center
>could inspire universities to train a new generation of
>investigators who could straddle the divide between academia and
>industry.
>
>"It could be a really good idea," he said.
>
>Both the need for and the risks of this strategy are clear in mental
>health. There have been only two major drug discoveries in the field
>in the past century; lithium for the treatment of bipolar disorder
>in 1949 and Thorazine for the treatment of psychosis in 1950.
>
>Both discoveries were utter strokes of luck, and almost every major
>psychiatric drug introduced since has resulted from small changes to
>Thorazine. Scientists still do not know why any of these drugs
>actually work, and hundreds of genes have been shown to play roles
>in mental illness - far too many for focused efforts. So many drug
>makers have dropped out of the field.
>
>For Dr. Thomas R. Insel, director of the National Institute of
>Mental Health, the drug industry's departure from this vital
>research area shows that the government must do something, although
>he acknowledges the risk.
>
>"Would we be foolish - we being an agency that has never developed
>drugs and actually doesn't know how to do therapeutics that well -
>to get into this space?" Dr. Insel asked.
>
>But Dr. William Potter, who was once a top researcher at the mental
>health institute and retired last year as the vice president of
>translational neuroscience at the giant drug maker Merck, said that
>far more basic research needed to be done on the causes of mental
>illness before anyone - industry or government - could successfully
>create breakthrough drugs.
>
>"We still don't even understand how lithium works," Dr. Potter said.
>"So how do people think we can find drugs systematically for mental
>illness?"
>
>A version of this article appeared in print on January 23, 2011, on
>page A1 of the New York edition.
>
>
>_________________________________________
>Michael Cammer, Assistant Research Scientist
>Skirball Institute of Biomolecular Medicine
>Lab: (212) 263-3208 Cell: (914) 309-3270
>
>
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Prof. James B. Pawley, Ph.
608-238-3953
21. N. Prospect Ave. Madison, WI 53726 USA
[log in to unmask]
3D Microscopy of Living Cells Course, June 11-23, 2011, UBC, Vancouver Canada
Info: http://www.3dcourse.ubc.ca/ Applications due by March 15, 2011
"If it ain't diffraction, it must be statistics." Anon.
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