Can you summarize the main message from the Stanford researchers about academic institutions and pharmaceutical companies in drug development?
Generate according to: Academic institutions are in a much better position than pharmaceutical companies to make the best decisions about which therapies deserve further development. That was the underlying message from a pair of Stanford researchers at a panel on stem cell science at last weekend's Association of Health Care Journalism 2015 conference.
A therapy involving high-dose chemotherapy followed by purified stem cell transplant for stage 4 breast cancer cured a relatively high number of women in a small trial almost 20 years ago but the pharmaceutical company with the rights to the technology decided not to develop the treatment, Weissman says. A larger trial of this therapy is currently being planned at Stanford.
Maria Grazia Roncarolo, MD, co-director of the institute, spoke about her own experience in an academic environment developing therapies for diseases that pharmaceutical companies deem to rare to merit their attention. Only after she showed that a therapy for severe combined immune deficiency could work did pharmaceutical companies get interested.
“Academic researchers should have the ability to test a therapy, to have control of the design and execution of the clinical trials, and pharmaceutical companies should do the production and marketing,” Roncarolo told the journalists attending the session.
Previously: An inside look at drug development, Stanford’s Irving Weissman on the (lost?) promise of stem cells and The largest stem cell research building in the U.S.
This prompt doesn't seem malicious.