Remember back in the day when there was a transatlantic “drug gap?” At the time it meant new therapies were approved first in the US and later on in Europe. That’s changed. It's reversed. And that’s unfortunate.
And here’s something that’s worse – we’re now playing catch up when it comes to advancing down the Critical Path. While the Reagan/Udall Foundation remains an unfunded and inactive shell, the European Union is making exciting and important progress.
The new program, funded by the French government, is called the Advanced Diagnostics for new therapeutic Approaches (ADNA) is a nine-year initiative aimed at developing personalized medicine for infectious diseases, cancer and rare genetic diseases by combining new diagnostic and therapeutic approaches.
That’s how you make drugs “safer.” That’s how you reduce costs. By getting the right medicine to the right patient in the right dose at the right time. All this at a time when many are arguing that the way to make drugs "safer" is to empower people to sue pharmaceutical companies. Sound familiar?
Funded by the French state-owned bank for small and medium-sized enterprises (OSEO), The ADNA program is funded to the tune €89.5 million. That is, at least in theory, what the Reagan/Udall Foundation is supposed to do. (And the ADNA program just part of the European Union’s bigger investment of almost €400 million in R&D over the 2008-2017 period.)
According to the partner companies (bioMérieux, Généthon, Transgene, GenoSafe), the ADNA will seek to identify and develop biomarkers that will allow new therapies to be targeted to patients who are most likely to benefit from them. Biomarkers can also help in making an early diagnosis, improving understanding of the progress of a disease, tracking a patient's response to treatment, and developing new diagnostic tests, they note. Sound familiar?
The €89.5 million in aid is broken down into €50.8 million in subsidies and €38.7 million in loans repayable in the event of success. Good model. Government and industry working together. Government as both regulator and colleague. Sound familiar?
Good for them. It will benefit us all. But shame on us for sitting on the sidelines and allowing political dithering to make us merely observers.
And here’s something that’s worse – we’re now playing catch up when it comes to advancing down the Critical Path. While the Reagan/Udall Foundation remains an unfunded and inactive shell, the European Union is making exciting and important progress.
The new program, funded by the French government, is called the Advanced Diagnostics for new therapeutic Approaches (ADNA) is a nine-year initiative aimed at developing personalized medicine for infectious diseases, cancer and rare genetic diseases by combining new diagnostic and therapeutic approaches.
That’s how you make drugs “safer.” That’s how you reduce costs. By getting the right medicine to the right patient in the right dose at the right time. All this at a time when many are arguing that the way to make drugs "safer" is to empower people to sue pharmaceutical companies. Sound familiar?
Funded by the French state-owned bank for small and medium-sized enterprises (OSEO), The ADNA program is funded to the tune €89.5 million. That is, at least in theory, what the Reagan/Udall Foundation is supposed to do. (And the ADNA program just part of the European Union’s bigger investment of almost €400 million in R&D over the 2008-2017 period.)
According to the partner companies (bioMérieux, Généthon, Transgene, GenoSafe), the ADNA will seek to identify and develop biomarkers that will allow new therapies to be targeted to patients who are most likely to benefit from them. Biomarkers can also help in making an early diagnosis, improving understanding of the progress of a disease, tracking a patient's response to treatment, and developing new diagnostic tests, they note. Sound familiar?
The €89.5 million in aid is broken down into €50.8 million in subsidies and €38.7 million in loans repayable in the event of success. Good model. Government and industry working together. Government as both regulator and colleague. Sound familiar?
Good for them. It will benefit us all. But shame on us for sitting on the sidelines and allowing political dithering to make us merely observers.
