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INTRODUCTION: WHITHER DRUG DEVELOPMENT? |
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This is a crucial time for drug development. The tremendous advances achieved in the past half-century have merely whetted the public's appetite for solutions to the many therapeutic needs currently unmet by the progress made to date. Most cancers, once they have spread beyond the reach of the surgeon's scalpel, are incurable. Alzheimer's diseasewhose sufferers were once fittingly compared by Nobelist Elie Wiesel to a book whose pages are falling out one by one, leaving nothing at the end but dusty coversincreases yearly in prevalence and is only slightly treatable by current medications. AIDS, the modern plague, is associated with a host of opportunistic infections and neoplasms, some of which are treatable, but the fundamental infection can be halted only temporarily by current therapy, and a vaccine is nowhere in sight. Vaccines to prevent many other infections are needed. Neurological and muscular diseases are typically unresponsive to drugs. Cystic fibrosis patients now can live into their 30s (and occasionally longer), but a normal life span eludes most victims of this genetic abnormality. |
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Why have we not solved these problems? It is certainly not because of the FDA, although this regulatory agency at times slows the access to market of some good drugs. The fault lies in the failure of science to come up with solutions. The future, like the past, is likely to depend on the following factors to develop new remedies: resources, brains, hard work, and luck. The process of |
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