Derek Lowe, Ph.D., writing for Corante, under his "In The Pipeline" blog imprint, alerts us to another not-for-profit science database sharing effort -- like the ones Matt Herper at Forbes has been covering (see here, and here). This time, the focus is on previously-failed attempts to treat Alzheimer's.
This idea (not replicating failed blind-alley research approaches) makes emminent good sense -- so, we all need to advocate for it -- for the sake of undertreated patients, worldwide:
. . . .[T]he Coalition Against Major Diseases has announced an open-access database of clinical trial results from failed drug candidates in the area. J&J, GlaxoSmithKline, Abbott, SanofiAventis, and AstraZenecahave contributed data from 11 failed drug candidates, and more look to be on the way from other companies. I hope that Eli Lilly, Merck (their own compounds and those from Schering-Plough), and Pfizer all join in on this - right off the top of my head, I can think of failed drugs from all of them, and I know that there are plenty more out there. (Pfizer seems to have dodged a question about whether or not they're participating, to judge from that Wall Street Journal article linked to above).
It'll be difficult to comb through all this to extract something useful, of course. But without sharing the data on these compounds, it would be utterly impossible for anything to come out of their failures. I think this is an excellent idea, and well worth extended to other therapeutic areas. . . .
Agreed, Derek -- let's hope they all join. Here's the overnight CAMD press release, as a full-color PDF file.
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