Is there a slow down of drugs?

[nec209]

People tell me there is a slow down of drugs being made now and it is getting harder for new drugs or cures now.Say there was time the drug companies where making lots and lots of drugs and now it is harder and harder to come up with new drugs now.Is this true?

 

Are we coming up to brick wall with new drugs or what we can come out with?

 

Also I know in past alot of peopel use herbs , spices ,tress ,plants ,flowers , microorganisms , incests ,shrubs so on. And alot did nothing or make person sick.

 

But has scientists look into the properties of these and done re-search to back up science proof. And I hear some drug companies are looking into it and using it is that true?

 

And what medicine do we have today that uses it? Some one was saying some oak in tree the drug companies are using for cancer .

[GDG]

According to the GAO, the rate of approval for new drugs (new medical entities, as opposed to new uses for existing drugs) is still increasing, but slowly: the number of NMEs approved increased only 7% between 1993 and 2004.

 

Some ascribe the reason to the idea that drug companies first went after the targets that were "easy", i.e., the "low hanging fruit" hypothesis. Research continues, but many diseases turn out to be more complex than originally thought (even those for which we have drugs now).

 

There is a long history of "traditional medicine", which includes herbal medicine and "folk" medicines. Study of these sometimes leads directly to a good drug product, as in the case of digitalis (derived from the plant foxglove). In other cases, research has shown that there is actually no medical effect. Traditional medicine is not based on data obtained from conducting clinical trials: that data is necessary in order to determine whether a treatment actually has an effect or not.

 

The cancer drug I think you are referring to is Tamoxifen, which is derived from yew trees. IIRC, the yew trees provide a convenient source for the precursors from which tamoxifen is made: I'm not aware of any traditional use of yew in medicine. (The wood was used to make longbows in times gone by. The needles are apparently quite toxic, and can poison livestock.)

[Mr Skeptic]

I think that it is temporarily harder to find and test new drugs, though of course there are still more drugs being found than before. Because we are running out of drugs found from traditional medicine, from existing species, and because testing requirements are tougher.

 

However I think that in the fairly near future it will become so easy that we could get personalized drugs.

[nec209]

According to the GAO, the rate of approval for new drugs (new medical entities, as opposed to new uses for existing drugs) is still increasing, but slowly: the number of NMEs approved increased only 7% between 1993 and 2004.

 

Some ascribe the reason to the idea that drug companies first went after the targets that were "easy", i.e., the "low hanging fruit" hypothesis. Research continues, but many diseases turn out to be more complex than originally thought (even those for which we have drugs now).

 

Can you explain this better.

[iNow]

During that time, the number of new drugs went up only 7%.

Even though the trend was upward, that's pretty slow.

 

Most suggest that the reason it was slow (relative to previous years) is because most of the easy problems found drug solutions first. Once those easier problems had solutions, we had to start focusing on the more complex problems, and those are harder to solve.

 

Since we're now trying to fix the complex stuff, we're spending more time than we used to trying to find solutions, so the total number of solutions released is lower than it used to be.

 

The "low hanging fruit" have all been picked, so now we have to spend more time climbing higher into the tree to find any fruit at all.

[nec209]

Why does everyone bash traditional medicine? Have they not look into the properties of trees ,herbs , spices ,flowers , microorganisms , incests ,shrubs so on and see if it good or bad? Where are the doctors in the rain forest ? There must be lots cures there.

 

I know in past alot of the drugs did not get inoproved. So a doctor or medicine man can say tale XY it wil help you !! And there was no research or study on it just the doctor or medicine man word. Many made people sick or did nothing .A man has cancer goes to medicine man say smoke pot or take heroin the symptoms are gone but the cancer still there. Do to lack of medical knowledge of the human body the word gets out and everyone think when you smoke pot or take heroin is cure for cancer .This was problem with traditional medicine. And other traditional medicine doing nothing or making person sick.

 

I'm not saying all traditional medicine is bad but many just do not look into it.

 

What I will like see is start from the beginning . Take all known living matter trees ,herbs , spices ,flowers , microorganisms , incests ,shrubs so on and all chemicals and do research or study on it . May be in 20 or 30 years from now we would have study all living matter trees ,herbs , spices ,flowers , microorganisms , incests ,shrubs so on and all chemicals .

 

Where is the trial and error and why is no one doing it?

[iNow]

Why does everyone bash traditional medicine?

Wait... what? Who did that? I don't see any bashing here.

Also, just because you are not personally aware of the studies does NOT mean none have been done.

 

 

Anyway... You should watch this special (it's incredibly accessible and interesting):

 

 

 

A synopsis:

 

http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/264223

This interview contains a lot of very important information, regardless of how one feels about CAM [Complimentary and Alternative Medicine]. Professor Baum starts by explaining the difference between complementary and alternative medicine. For him, complementary medicine is everything that improves the quality of life of a patient undergoing medical treatments, possibly for life-threatening diseases such as breast cancer. Alternative medicine, on the other hand, seeks to replace scientific medicine. Says Michael Baum:

I'm obviously against alternative medicine, because to me, alternative, by definition, means it does not work. If it works, we would use it.

 

As an example of that, he cites a few medicines of herbal origin that are being used for cancer therapy such as vinca alkaloids form periwinkle and taxanes from yew trees.

 

<...>

 

Later on, they talk about what Baum politely calls "post-modern relativism," the idea that everything is but an opinion. I have an opinion, but you have read some other books and you have therefore another opinion and both opinions are equally valid. As a result, we have now alternative medicine, alternative teaching methods, alternative legal advocates, "but," he says "we haven't yet come up with an alternative Boeing 747 pilot".

 

He links this to the MMR vaccine crisis where people are being told by alternologists and are convinced that there is a conspiracy of the medical establishment and the government that, in order to protect themselves, they were willing to sacrifice countless children to autism. "This is simply a lie," he says, and he adds that even among his closest friends, there are people who are not immunizing their children and that these children are now unprotected as a result.

 

<...>

 

Dawkins asks Baum if he can cite a few examples of complementary/alternative therapies for which he does have time. Baum cites art therapy as an example of complementary therapy in which he has invested quite some time. He also cites acupuncture, which is bonkers as an alternative complementary medicine belief system but which does have some value as a complementary therapy, for example in pain management. Still, his belief doesn't seem to go very far.

 

He goes on giving an example of the importance of clinical trials and tells a story about how he was chairing a meeting in Florence, Italy on the role of CAM in the treatment of breast cancer. He was in serious pain at the time, so much so that he was limping. An acupuncturist offered him a treatment. The next day, he was completely without pain, and even visited the Uffizi gallery for a few hours. The interesting part is that she offered the treatment, but that he didn't accept it. Had he accepted it, the result would have been so spectacular that he would have become a convert. A nice illustration of the importance of controlled trials.

 

Baum is also telling Dawkins about how many alternologists always go back to some "golden age" of medicine, and argues that there is no such thing as a golden age of medicine in the past, that the golden age is now, and that it will become more golden if only science can continue. He gives the example of Victorian England where life expectancy was not much more than about 40 years and where 30% of the children died shortly after birth whereas now most children survive, and that we now have life expectancies of close to 80 years, leading us to work longer than in the past.

 

Dawkins and Baum talk about the importance of science education. Baum tells Dawkins that we have a scientifically illiterate population, a scientifically illiterate house of commons and, worse, that they actually take pride into their scientific illiteracy. Scientists have an important task here, he says, and children should be taught the scientific method from early secondary school in order to have a scientifically literate population. <

more at the link

>

[GDG]

Why does everyone bash traditional medicine? Have they not look into the properties of trees ,herbs , spices ,flowers , microorganisms , incests ,shrubs so on and see if it good or bad? Where are the doctors in the rain forest ? There must be lots cures there.

 

I know in past alot of the drugs did not get inoproved. So a doctor or medicine man can say tale XY it wil help you !! And there was no research or study on it just the doctor or medicine man word. Many made people sick or did nothing .A man has cancer goes to medicine man say smoke pot or take heroin the symptoms are gone but the cancer still there. Do to lack of medical knowledge of the human body the word gets out and everyone think when you smoke pot or take heroin is cure for cancer .This was problem with traditional medicine. And other traditional medicine doing nothing or making person sick.

 

I'm not saying all traditional medicine is bad but many just do not look into it.

 

What I will like see is start from the beginning . Take all known living matter trees ,herbs , spices ,flowers , microorganisms , incests ,shrubs so on and all chemicals and do research or study on it . May be in 20 or 30 years from now we would have study all living matter trees ,herbs , spices ,flowers , microorganisms , incests ,shrubs so on and all chemicals .

 

Where is the trial and error and why is no one doing it?

 

Who says no one is doing that? A number of current drugs on the market originated from folk medicines or natural products (like digitalis). There was a pharmaceutical company that based its entire approach on that (Shaman Pharmaceuticals -- it went bust in 1999).

 

But lets look at the difficulties in trying everything.

• First off, how many different species of plant, fungus, bacteria, and insect are there? The number is astronomical. There is no way that any company has the resources to test every living thing for possible therapeutics, even if you only needed to run one test per organism.
  
• Second, you're going to have to fractionate those critters somehow: you can't just stuff a whole caterpillar into a test tube and see if it has any pharmaceutical activity. If it does have an active component, and the component is a small molecule (typical drug size), you may be able to separate it out by chromatography. However, if the active component is a protein or other large molecule, the act of separation may denature it, destroying its activity. It is not easy to separate components, while preserving their activity, when you don't know what those components actually are. For each component, you'll need to test a range of different concentrations, several different concentrations for each different activity you're looking for.
  
• OK, so maybe we concentrate on only those organisms that are actually used in traditional medicine today. It would help if we could focus just on the traditional medicines that actually seem to help. Which ones are they? Here, the problem is that you just cannot tell if a traditional medicine does anything helpful, because no research was done, and there is no control group. Some have been found to be pretty harmful -- like the ones that contain lead
  
• OK, so say you've found a traditional treatment that seem to be effective. Now you have to take it apart, because until you know what causes the beneficial effect, there is no way to manufacture it. You can't just package portions of "wonder root", because the amount of active component can vary from plant to plant, and from day to day, depending on its environmental conditions. You can't establish an effective dose if you don't know how strong your root is. So you have to narrow it down to the specific compound or compounds that are responsible for the activity.
  
• Then, you have to hope that the active component is something you can synthesize. Many natural products are very, very complex and difficult to synthesize. It is not uncommon to see someone earn their PhD in synthetic chemistry by being the first to synthesize a microscopic amount of a natural product, taking 25 synthetic steps and 4-6 years.
  

 

It is a lot of work!

[Genecks]

In general, there has been a slow down of drugs. So, yeah.

In terms of using natural herbs and things?

 

Well, in a way biologists use nature, such as plants, plant toxins, fungi, and animal parts in order to create treatments. So, there still exists a lot of background belief in using homeopathic medicine.

 

I think, however, that science should really further investigate the possibility to rapid evolve various plants that already provide possible cures and treatments for people. Afterward, see if some new, interesting chemical structure that is related to the old, homeopathic structure has evolved; if so, then it may be possible to use it for medical use.

 

In general, I think most scientific research has kind of dried up a lot of the treatments that nature can provide. So, people have been synthesizing things in the laboratory, because nature hasn't provided us with a better solution yet.

 

Am I bashing nature? No.

 

I'm simply stating that if nature can provide a treatment, scientists will apply it. Otherwise, if nature isn't good enough, medical scientists will attempt to find a better treatment via scientific experiments.

[Mr Skeptic]

Even when we use nature as our inspiration for a drug, they then tweak the molecule a bit to see if they can come up with a better one. So don't expect the plant to be able to make the final product, even if its chemical was the inspiration for it. And almost always, synthesizing it is far better then having the plant make it, because it is cheaper and can be scaled up quickly.

[GDG]

In general, there has been a slow down of drugs. So, yeah.

In terms of using natural herbs and things?

 

Well, in a way biologists use nature, such as plants, plant toxins, fungi, and animal parts in order to create treatments. So, there still exists a lot of background belief in using homeopathic medicine.

***

 

Just as a point of clarification, homeopathy is not the same as traditional medicine. Homeopathy was invented in 1790 by someone who took the medieval idea of treating "like with like", i.e., that if your illness was characterized by particular symptoms, you should administer a substance that produces the same symptoms. Of course, those substances are often noxious, so they are diluted to an extreme degree. When I say "an extreme degree", I mean that the substance is serially diluted so many times that there is only a very small chance that even a single molecule remains in the formulation. In other words, homeopathy is pure bunk.

 

Traditional or herbal medicine, on the other hand, is generally based on, well, tradition, and usually involves administering or applying some form of plant preparation. The plant preparations may have components that actually do have a pharmacological effect (although, apparently not all preparation do). Whether the traditional herb is selected for a religious reason, or based on lore handed down from practitioner to practitioner, it at least has a chance of having some effect. Homeopathy has none (unless you are treating dehydration).

[nec209]

From what the other poster was saying there seems to be a slow down of drugs being made now.The reply was that we got drugs for the easy stuff to treat .Now it is to find drugs for the hard stuff too treat .

 

I was saying to try herbs , spices ,tress ,plants ,flowers , microorganisms , incests ,shrubs so on.The reply I got was they are looking into this but it takes time and there is not enough resources to try all living matter in 10 years.

 

 

The reply I got was all the different species of plants, fungus, bacteria, and insect and all living matter is so astronomical that they do not have the resources to try this in 10 years even 80 years. They are looking into it but it takes very long time do to the lack of resources .

 

So the reply is yes they are trying every thing they are looking very hard to find cure.

 

People tell me most all drugs you see now did not exit 200 years ago .Other people say the slow down of drugs is also do to testing .They come out with new drug but have do all kinds of testing before it comes out to make sure people do not get sick.The testing takes a long time.

 

Others say what is really progressing fast now is cloning .stem cell and genetic engineering and this will transform society like the dark age to now with medical advancement.

 

I don't know what book ,web site or article to read about how drug companies work , how they look for a cure and what they are working on.

[Genecks]

Is jdurg still around?

jdurg could probably answer your last question.

I believe jdurg is working for a pharmaceutical industry at the moment.

 

Other than that, the process is similar to Thomas Edison's attempt to make a lightbulb.

Some people say serendipity was how people found solutions to treat and cure a lot of past medical problems.

These days, however, we have much better scientific principles to attempt to resolve issues and find solutions to problems.

 

So, a good place to start is understanding the history of disease and the history of treatment for those diseases.

 

Here are some things to read:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_medicine

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eradication_of_infectious_diseases

Edited October 31, 2009 by Genecks

[Skye]

There are several methods to provide the initial chemical compound to work with. Natural products are compounds derived from nature, mainly organic molecules used for defence from being eaten. Given that biochemical pathways that produce classes of molecules are known, and the apparent need for defence can be estimated, organisms can be collected from nature with a reasonable chance of finding defence molecules. Also since the class of molecules are known, generally molecules can be isolated based on what properties you'd expect them to have. Aside from that you have combinatorial chemistry, where huge numbers of different molecules are produced. These will generally be based on known drugs so you have an idea of how they are supposed to work. There's also the goal of being able to work from the other direction, using models of the active sites of a protein that you wish for a molecule to interact with to provide the basis for the design of new drugs. This is still something in development though.

 

Once molecules have been isolated it's a process of elimination based on how effective they are against side effects caused. For example, a number of compounds will be screened against cancer cells of various types, the ones which kill the cancer will then proceed to a next stage which might be the side effects caused in rats and so on up until a drug is ready for human trials. The initial stages are often caried out in universities, once you get to the latter stages, especially human trials, the money required and money to be made, means that private companies are more involved.