Optimism for a breakthrough against Alzheimer’s disease has been boosted by encouraging clinical trial data from Eli Lilly, adding to perceptions of a broader renaissance in the pharmaceuticals industry.
Optimism for a breakthrough against Alzheimer’s disease has been boosted by encouraging clinical trial data from Eli Lilly, adding to perceptions of a broader renaissance in the pharmaceuticals industry.
Positive signs yesterday from a trial of the US company’s solanezumab drug appeared to increase its chances of becoming the first treatment capable of slowing the pace of the memory-wasting condition.
That hope follows recent advances against heart disease, cancer and hepatitis C as the industry recovers from the innovation drought that depressed growth in the past decade.
European regulators this week approved the first significant new treatment for high cholesterol since statins in the 1990s and tomorrow are expected to make a recommendation on the first vaccine for malaria. These are part of a rising tide of new drug approvals in the past two years that has helped restore faith in the industry’s ability to innovate after it lost patent protection for many of its best-selling older medicines.
“We are seeing new technologies that are enabling us to target disease like we never have before,” Joe Jimenez, chief executive of Novartis, the biggest European pharmaceuticals group by market capitalisation, told the Financial Times yesterday. The Swiss group this month won approval for a new heart drug, called Entresto, tipped by analysts for up to $11bn in annual sales.
This optimism is reflected in the 40 per cent rise in the S&P pharmaceuticals index over the past year, compared with a 7 per cent lift in the broader S&P 500.
However, sceptics warn that the industry still faces big challenges from the high cost of developing drugs and pressure on prices as health systems around the world struggle to cope with rising demand from ageing populations.
Eli Lilly hopes its solanezumab drug, by allowing patients to remain independent for longer, can help ease the cost of Alzheimer’s on society while delivering a multibillion- dollar windfall for the company.
Analysts warned that the drug’s fate would remain in the balance until the results from a further big clinical trial are reported late next year; many previous Alzheimer’s studies have failed at that stage, causing heavy financial losses.
But new analysis yesterday of a previous trial of more than 1,000 people with mild Alzheimer’s reinforced earlier signs that solanezumab might provide a lasting reduction of about 34 per cent in the pace of mental decline.
“The results provide encouraging evidence that solanezumab could indeed be acting on the disease processes that drive Alzheimer’s,” said Eric Karran, research director at Alzheimer’s Research UK, a charity.
Other signs of renewed pharma innovation include the approval by the European Commission this week of Amgen’s Repatha drug, which was shown in clinical trials to reduce “bad cholesterol” by more than 55 per cent in people who failed to respond to statins. A similar product called Praluent from Sanofi of France and Regeneron of the US is likely to be approved by the US Food and Drug Administration tomorrow, igniting a battle with Amgen for what is expected to be a multibillion-dollar market. European regulators are also expected to rule this week on GlaxoSmithKline’s Mosquirix malaria vaccine, which has been in development for 30 years.
