contents
The pharmaceutical industry has poured tens of billions into Alzheimer’s research and testing for years. Almost unsuccessful so far.
Normally, pharmaceutical companies have to invest roughly one to 2.5 billion US dollars to develop a new drug. Usually. It’s different with Alzheimer’s. Lorenzo Biasio, a pharmaceutical analyst at Credit Suisse, calculates: “According to an estimate from 2021, 42.5 billion US dollars were spent on private Alzheimer’s research between 1995 and 2021.”
The pharmaceutical industry alone has already invested 42 billion US dollars in the search for a cure for Alzheimer’s in the last 30 years. The big breakthrough is still a long way off.
With Aduhelm, a drug that is supposed to slow down the progression of the disease has now been approved in the USA. But how effective it is is highly controversial; accordingly, Aduhelm may only be administered to a limited extent.
Again and again, expensive research projects lead to a dead end: this was the case at Roche on Monday. The Basel-based pharmaceutical company had carried out two complex clinical studies with Alzheimer’s patients with the drug gantenerumab.
However, gantenerumab could not slow down the mental deterioration of the patients. A bitter disappointment for all Alzheimer’s sufferers, but also for Roche.
The problem: researchers still don’t fully understand how Alzheimer’s works. «The question is already gone at the beginning: What is the right starting point? What should a possible therapy look like?” says pharmaceutical analyst Biasio.
Lorenzo Biasio points out a second problem: “We are dealing with a disease that develops over a very long time. As is now becoming more and more apparent, this could mean that patients are treated very early, i.e. before the first serious symptoms appear. »
It attracts a billion dollar business
Despite setbacks costing billions, the pharmaceutical industry is not giving up, because billions of dollars in business are tempting. Around 30 million people worldwide are currently suffering from Alzheimer’s; tendency further increasing. A drug that slows down or even stops the progression of the disease would be very welcome and would also be handsomely remunerated.
Lorenzo Biasio estimates the market potential for an Alzheimer’s drug in the USA alone at around 20 billion US dollars. And he would have put the sales potential of the Roche drug that just failed at a maximum of 10 billion US dollars per year worldwide. Even in the pharmaceutical business, these are gigantic figures.
research continues
The US company Biogen, together with the Japanese company Eisai, now has the most promising project: In clinical tests, they were able to slow down the progression of Alzheimer’s disease. Meanwhile, Roche emphasizes that they want to continue researching medicines and diagnostic tests in order to be able to detect the disease at an early stage.