Although this article
https://www.biopharmadive.com/news/pharma-neuroscience-retreat-return-brain-drugs/570250/ is a year old (which also implies that things are probably happening and moving along already) it’s something that everyone should read to show how important and valuable ($) treatments for neuroscience diseases like brain cancers (like glioblastoma), and CNS (central nervous system) diseases (like alzheimer’s, parkinson’s, multiple sclerosis, ALS, huntington’s, peripheral neuropathies) are.
Bioasis has an extremely valuable technology (xB3) that transports medicines across the blood-brain barrier (BBB) providing a treatment path to hundreds of previously untreatable diseases of the central nervous system. If you don’t have time to read the full article, below are some hilites.
Paul isn’t alone in that view. Earlier this month, the CEO of Roche Pharmaceuticals
said the 2020s could see neuroscience make the same kind of enormous strides that oncology did during the 2010s. Jeremy Levin, head of neurology-focused Ovid Therapeutics and chair to biotech’s largest trade group, expects “radical” new therapies to emerge even quicker, likely in the next three years. Overall, nearly a dozen industry executives and analysts who spoke with BioPharma Dive envision brain drugs making a comeback soon, and with big pharma in tow.
“This is a repeated pattern that you see in the industry,” Levin said in an interview. “People leave things alone, they think it’s a waste of time, waste of money. Then they see some success. The smart big companies dive in, buy the companies out or board with them, and the result is a complete break-open of the field.”
A consequence of the reprioritization, however, is a relative lack of big pharma resources invested in developing new, effective therapies for some of the world’s most common illnesses. While “me-too” cancer drugs proliferate, there are few, if any, novel treatments for diseases like Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and depression, each of which affect millions of patients.
Executives at small biotechs, though, say it’ll take just a few positive studies for the giants to come back. That’s been true with gene therapy as well as immuno-oncology, which produced some of the world’s best-selling drugs, including Merck’s Keytruda and Bristol-Myers’ Opdivo.
In any case, analysts say big pharma’s interest in neuroscience, if renewed, wouldn’t be focused on just large markets, but also extend to incredibly small, or orphan, diseases. Drugs for those conditions come with regulatory incentives and can be sold at high price tags, potentially making an investment more attractive.
Acquisitions, as Nadeau points out, would hallmark a big pharma return. Since many large developers don’t have deep research and commercialization teams in neuroscience, a buyout would likely be faster than building from the ground up.