Neurotech industry in Portfolio magazine
In Porfolio magazine, David Ewing-Duncan wrote a meaty feature on the neurotechnology industry, the big business behind new mind drugs, neuroprosthetic implants, and other efforts to fix broken brains and even augment healthy ones. (Duncan is the author of The Geneticist Who Played Hoops With My DNA.) The online version of the article is accompanied by a terrific interactive feature looking at research in the field. From The Duncan's article, titled The Ultimate Cure:
These firms are trying to adapt groundbreaking research into the basic workings of the brain to new drugs for ailments ranging from insomnia to multiple sclerosis. Some companies are trying to regrow portions of the brain using stem cells. Others have developed implants to insert into a person’s head to control seizures and restore hearing. Cyberkinetics Neurotechnology Systems, a Foxborough, Massachusetts, company, implanted electrodes into the brain of a quadriplegic that allowed him to operate machines with his thoughts...Link
Neurotech’s returns are already enormous. In 2006, the industry brought in more than $120 billion—about $101 billion from drugs and the rest from neurodevices ($4.5 billion) and neurodiagnostics ($15 billion)—up 10 percent from the previous year, reports NeuroInsights, a market research and investment advisory firm. But industry analysts insist that this figure hardly begins to suggest the potential. For Alzheimer’s, a disease currently without an effective treatment for about 4.5 million sufferers in the U.S., 40 companies—including behemoths like Eli Lilly, GlaxoSmithKline, and Wyeth, as well as Targacept and a gaggle of similar upstarts—are testing 48 new drugs in human trials in a quest for the Prozac of dementia. The push has brought many small to midsize biotech firms together in partnerships with larger pharmaceutical companies to pursue everything from pain-control compounds derived from chili peppers to an antistroke medicine developed from vampire-bat saliva. There is so much activity in neurotech that last fall it got its own index, NERV, on the Nasdaq, tracking the performance of 30 leading brain companies based in the United States. Analysts estimate that the sector should continue to grow by about 10 percent a year, which would produce a brain-industrial complex worth more than $300 billion in the next 10 years.
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in a quest for the Prozac of dementia
I understand what they're trying to say, but I certainly hope they don't land on the "Prozac of dementia." It's good to be hopeful, but there's also value to keeping in mind the limitations this sort of intervention has run up against in the past.
Prozac, used by 40m people, does not work say scientists (from The Guardian)
They seriously called it NERV?
Amen, Sis. A lot of them there anti-depressants are causing depression. The ADD drugs are making it worse. The cholesterol lowerers are causing strokes and heart attacks. Would it be crazy to have clinical trials that are NOT funded by the company that made the drug?
Would it be crazy to have clinical trials that are NOT funded by the company that made the drug?
When I was younger I missed a question on a test that asked something on these lines. I answered what I thought was reasonable and what I thought happened- that independent laboratory tested everything and that drugs which were on the market proved safe for various demographics etc.
Boy was I surprised when I got a 50 and "See me" scrawled on my test. Teacher said simply, "In a rational world, this would happen. Remind yourself regularly that the world is not rational, and next time, do the assigned reading."
This is tragicomic. NERV indeed..
Wow. You had a good teacher. This is my objection to "science". It's always paid for by someone who's selling something, even if there's a government intermediary. Even at the scientist level, if you've spent five years trying to prove an hypothesis, think of the pressure to get the expected results. If you don't, five years of your life will have been wasted. And since science tends to be piece-work, your employment prospects may take a nose-dive. Even the most honest people must be tortured by it. We really need to find a way to separate the research from the expected outcome in science.
Tenn-kun; seen this?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=axU9ngbTxKw
I've had some interesting teachers over my day. The best of them all was this year's Chemistry teacher. His wisdom has included- "McKnight's Guide to Scoring Well on High Level Exams" RTDQ & ATDQ (read the damn question, answer the damn question!), various political informations, the concise explanation of doctrines that led to my conversion to Buddhism, etc.