Ann: FDA End-of Phase 2 Status Update, page-104

Dementia research: Drug firms despair of finding cure and withdraw funding after a catalogue of failures

Tuesday 17 February 2015


Drug companies are retreating from the search for a dementia cure after “repeated and costly failures” to develop a breakthrough drug, a major report has warned.

Scientific and financial challenges have meant that, between 1998 and 2012, there were 101 unsuccessful attempts to develop drugs for Alzheimer’s disease, with only three drugs gaining approval for treating symptoms of the disease, according to the study.

The report, compiled by the Dementia Forum of the World Innovation Summit for Health (Wish), warned that a “history of failures” has created “funding fatigue” among donors and “Big Pharma”. Major drug companies had halved the number of research programmes into central nervous system disorders, a category which includes dementia, between 2009 and 2014, the report said. Experts said that with no known cure and a huge increase in cases expected within a decade, “a massive step change in research funding” was needed...

All of it:

http://www.independent.co.uk/life-s...ing-after-catalogue-of-failures-10052467.html