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Over a year ago, I noted that the winds of change were coming for the pharmaceutical industry. This week, a very good article came out in the Guardian that stated two of the largest firms in the business, GSK and AZN are getting out of the neuroscience business. This is a huge blow to those that suffer from mental disorders such as bipolar, depression, anxiety, schizophrenia, OCD and the likes. The reason for this, according to David Nutt, a professor of Neuropsychopharmacology at Imperial College in London, is:
Despite the public health imperative, not only has EU research funding remained very low, but – even worse – big pharma is increasingly coming to see research into better neuropsychiatric drug targets as economically non-viable.
There are a number of reasons why companies are leaving the field, according to the report. Medicines for brain disorders take longer to develop than for other conditions – on average, 13 years – and there is a high failure rate.
Figure 1. Prevalence of Mental Disorders in the US from NIMH.
The brain is one of the last unknowns of medicine. It is a complex network of cells that interact to enable humans to hear, see, talk, feel, remember, experience emotion, and it controls our ‘biological clocks.’ I believe that the brain will be the ultimate frontier for personalized medicine. Mental disorders need to be treated on an individual basis. There is nothing worse than having a loved one or someone very close to you who suffers from these debilitating disorders. The patients require time with a psychiatrist/psychologist to be properly diagnosed. The varying treatment regimens take time, and in many cases patients will have to go on and off multiple medications until the right combination and dosages are attained. The drug combinations can take years to complete and the patient must want to get better and those around must provide support and compassion that the patient requires for successful treatment. Further, those close to the patient must try to understand that it is very hard for the patients to describe, with words, what they are experiencing.
The most important things are the hardest things to say. They are the things you get ashamed of, because
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