Drug companies that attempt to create and test new multiple sclerosis medications seem subject to a lot of drama these days. There seems to be a squeeze on available money and that is making investors nervous. Those investors, in turn, are trying to force companies to partner and be bought out. Here's one story:
Avigen Inc., a company which was developing a drug to control muscle spasticity in multiple sclerosis had to fire around 70% of its employees when its drug failed to pass a clinical trial. Now, the company's number one shareholder (a venture capital fund called Biotechnology Value Fund or BVF) is trying to force a change in leadership at the company and a merger with another company called MediciNova Inc. MediciNova is also working on a multiple scerlosis drug (read the full press release).
I feel bad for all the researchers and patients who get caught up in the business side of things. I'm not naive and I know that developing new treatments and medications costs money and relies on businesses that are willing to take risks and invest in new medical technologies. But it just seems that recently there have been a lot of decisions made for business reasons and I'm just afraid that researchers who could be making progress are having to struggle to keep their jobs. It's a shame.
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Avigen Inc., a company which was developing a drug to control muscle spasticity in multiple sclerosis had to fire around 70% of its employees when its drug failed to pass a clinical trial. Now, the company's number one shareholder (a venture capital fund called Biotechnology Value Fund or BVF) is trying to force a change in leadership at the company and a merger with another company called MediciNova Inc. MediciNova is also working on a multiple scerlosis drug (read the full press release).
I feel bad for all the researchers and patients who get caught up in the business side of things. I'm not naive and I know that developing new treatments and medications costs money and relies on businesses that are willing to take risks and invest in new medical technologies. But it just seems that recently there have been a lot of decisions made for business reasons and I'm just afraid that researchers who could be making progress are having to struggle to keep their jobs. It's a shame.
Read More on Spasticity and Multiple Sclerosis
Hi Julie, You wrote:
“I’m not naive and I know that developing new treatments and medications costs money and relies on businesses that are willing to take risks and invest in new medical technologies.”
Well, most patients aren’t naive either, but many would reserve some compassion for the poor unfortunate patients who are mislead into partaking on the various medical “trial-run” experimentation in the Pharma world.
Yes, there are risks for investors: the whole shebang could any day fall completely in on itself on the flip of a coin.
But also, there are risks for those who have regrettably lost their lives in experiments to “deliver” those profits.
“I’m just afraid that researchers who could be making progress are having to struggle to keep their jobs.”
Yes, me too. But I am also afraid for the very lives of those shell-shocked random citizens, told the words “diagnosis incurable” and, in some cases at least, “frightened” into commencing chemical infusions alongside all of the other trappings of the world where financial investments speculation meets with the chemicals industries to produce hope in the form of a experimental “Rising Share Price” coursing throughout ones inner-veins.
So I too would be fearful for their jobs, but equally fearful for the lives of those patients who vector market-investor advancements via wagering their corporeal self.
Yes, but patients know what they are getting into. If you choose to participate in a clinical trial, the risks are high. But, without risk, there is rarely rewards.
For the working researchers, it’s part of the process to fail as you develop new products. Learning how something doesn’t work is nearly as important as learning how something does work. It’s sad that when researchers try their best to develop something new and it fails, they all just get fired. What happens to that knowledge they have now? Does it just go away and not be funneled back into similar research?
Of course, when trials fail and it causes patients to die, that’s the most tragic of all. But, patients take that risk when they sign up for those studies.