Yesterday’s announcement by the biotechnology company Trophos SA
of the lack of effectiveness of their compound olesoxime adds to
the long list of drugs that have failed to live up to their
early promise in the lab. It’s a story that’s common across the
world of neurodegenerative disease, including common conditions
such as Parkinson’s disease and Alzheimer’s disease. The path
from bench to bedside is fraught with pitfalls…. In their press
release, Trophos suggested that trials have to be conducted when
the ‘window of opportunity’ is greatest – the sooner a drug is
administered the better its effect is likely to be. Otherwise,
we don’t know whether these treatments genuinely do not work or
is it simply a case of ‘too little, too late’? Certainly,
companies such as Biogen Idec have picked up on this,
restricting the time limit for inclusion in their trial of
dexpramipexole to two years from symptom onset, as opposed to
the three year (and sometime longer) limit that has been used in
previous trials. It means t