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THERAPEUTICS - WHAT COMES NEXT?
14 Aug 2009
Clinical Research
With the old decade coming to an end and 2010 dawning on us, it is a time for looking to the future. But in the pharmaceuticals industry, the next year alone may be too short a period to look at.
In areas such as therapeutics, it is over longer periods of time that trends emerge, as new products and techniques arise and different possibilities are explored. Those who seek to plan ahead need to see further than just what the next 12 months may bring; their task is to identify what areas will be the next big thing for this segment of the industry.
A number of areas may be expected to form a major part of the emerging therapeutics scene. For example, those linked with genetic research could benefit heavily from the groundbreaking work that has been carried out in the last few years, studies that have not only mapped out the human genome but have made possible therapies related to a whole variety of genetic problems.
This week Rosetta Genomics announced the creation of its latest microRNA-based molecular diagnostic test, which can differentiate between the asbestos-related illness mesothelioma and various kinds of carcinomas. The firm noted that: "MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are recently-discovered, naturally-occurring, small RNAs that act as master regulators and have the potential to form the basis for a new class of diagnostics and therapeutics."
So new genetic discoveries will be a major part of the picture. Another is the area of molecular biochemistry. As Emax Health noted, new findings were published in the January 2009 edition of the American Journal of Pathology revealing work at Sao Paolo State University that has found a molecule - annexin A1 - that inhibits inflammation by reducing the flow of white blood cells into an area. Thus a new wave of anti-inflammatory products may be another new arrival. As the authors of the study state: "These experimental findings may impact the development of novel therapeutics based on the anti-migratory actions of annexin A1."
All kinds of other new therapeutics may emerge as the result of various new studies in different areas. One factor to consider is that it is not just the same firms or the same people carrying out the research. Oregon Live noted that four companies have been set up in 2008 to try to turn the findings of projects by Oregon Health & Science University researchers into tangible products for the open market. Added to other firms formed for similar purposes in recent years, this brings the total to 37 since 2000.
The 2008 companies includes Cascade LifeSciences, which is seeking to turn stem cell discoveries into products to deal with a range of diseases. There is also Genefac, which uses proteins that can guide clinicians in the right courses of therapy to use. Transmed Oncology Inc is taking on two new discoveries, one of which could produce therapies for lung, bone, breast, colon, pancreatic and prostate cancer, plus melanoma and the other treatments for prostate cancer.
With new research generating extra possibilities all the time, the scope of areas that new therapeutics could cover is wide. Those that will be biggest are likely to be ones that concern potentially fatal diseases. But exactly what may depend chiefly on the areas that see the most successful research. Where there are no breakthroughs now, however, the likelihood could be that much greater of one in the future as new research concentrates on finding pioneering treatments for conditions for which treatments are as yet limited in effect.
