NBC-HEALTH NEWS
Feb 5, 2015 NEWS
An experimental drug to treat
Parkinson's disease damaged the lungs of monkeys, and it almost certainly would
do the same to people, researchers reported Wednesday.
It's unusual for medical journals to
report on drugs that fail, but most do fail before they are ever tested in
humans. This report, published in the journal Science Translational Medicine,
illustrates the pitfalls of drug development.
empty
The vast, scientific plain that
potential drugs must survive before reaching human trials is dubbed the
"Valley of Death" — and this once-promising drug has likely fallen
into it. The National Institutes of Health estimates that as many as 90 percent
of experimental drugs never make it to testing in humans.
Reina Fuji of drugmaker Genentech
Inc. and colleagues were testing a drug that interferes with a compound called
leucine-rich repeat kinase 2 (LRRK2). Mutations in the gene that produces LRRK2
have been linked with Parkinson's disease. The mutations appear to cause
overproduction of LRRK2.
The idea was to make a drug that
reduces overproduction of LRRK2. It looked good in mice. But when it was tested
in monkeys, the drug damaged their lungs.
That might make for "a critical
safety liability" for human patients, they concluded.
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