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Swiss Drug Developer Novartis Will Fund, Share Diabetes Research
Swiss Drug Developer Novartis Will Fund, Share Diabetes Research -- Posted by Gumbo on 11-08-04 19:08
Swiss Drug Developer Novartis Will Fund, Share Diabetes Research
Oct. 28--Swiss drug giant Novartis SA said yesterday it is spending $4
million to fund scientists performing diabetes research at Harvard
University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the Broad
Institute, and will make the findings public for other scientists to use.
The effort, Novartis's first major initiative since moving its research arm
to Cambridge last year, builds on work underway by some of the same
scientists that explores the underlying genetic causes of Type 2, or
adult-onset, diabetes. Though the disease affects more than 18 million
people, or 6.3 percent of the population, the intricacies of its mechanism
and the genetic factors that make a person susceptible are poorly
understood.
For Novartis, which has one drug to treat diabetes and is working to expand
its franchise in the fast-growing disease, the high-profile research effort
is a way of forging close ties with some of its most important new academic
neighbors and an attempt to try a new way of collaborating that could become
a model for others in the bio pharmaceutical industry.
"This is a very progressive step on the part of a private, for-profit
biotechnology company," said Sheldon Krimsky, a science policy specialist at
Tufts University and a director of the Council for Responsible Genetics, a
public interest advocacy group. "It's a recognition that you can still use
this research to make profitable products but the knowledge of the genes
should be open and available to all users. It's very unusual."
Alan D. Cherrington, president of the American Diabetes Association, said he
was unaware of any other industry-sponsored diabetes research effort in
which results would be made public.
"Often, when the pharmaceutical industry gets into relationships with
academia, they do it in a proprietary way, so they fund the lab and in
return they have access to insider information. This seems extraordinary."
Under the three-year agreement, scientists from the Novartis Institutes for
BioMedical Research will work with scientists from Harvard, MIT, and the
Broad Institute, a joint venture between the two universities that seeks to
create tools and methods for understanding the genetic components of common
diseases. The Broad Institute, formed earlier this year, intends to make its
discoveries available to all scientists. Scientists at Lund University in
Sweden, who have pioneered the role of genetics in diabetes, are also
participating.
David Altshuler, director of Broad's program in medical and population
genetics and principal investigator of the Novartis effort, said he hopes to
sort through the hundreds of genes thought to play a role in Type 2 diabetes
to identify those that may be good targets for drugs.
"If you prove that a gene plays a role in the disease, it's much more likely
that a drug developed to work on that target will be beneficial to
patients," he said.
But Altshuler said the effort was far from assured. Drug makers have tried
to apply all sorts of genetic knowledge to drug discovery in an effort to
improve the percentage of effective drugs that emerge from research labs.
"It's too early to say whether this kind of genetic validation will improve
drug discovery," he said.
In many ways, the diabetes project bears the mark of Dr. Mark Fishman, the
former Massachusetts General Hospital geneticist who was chosen to head
Novartis research efforts when they moved to Cambridge last year and who
claims he wants to reshape the entire drug-discovery process. Making the
efforts public will speed research, he said.
"If you hide the data, you have to put up artificial barriers and your
scientists have to be more cautious," said Fishman, president of the
Novartis Institutes. "I view this as the kind of work that nobody benefits
from keeping secret."
Fishman said the diabetes initiative will yield all sorts of intangible
benefits to Novartis, such as finding researchers who might later be
recruited to Novartis. Moreover, he said, the genomic screening methods used
in diabetes research will be applicable to other diseases.
"I hope this will evolve into a more systematic method of finding cures for
diseases that can be applied to other therapeutic areas," he said.
Commercially, the open approach adopted by Novartis represents a calculated
gamble that it will be better able to capitalize on the identification of
specific genes that play a role in Type 2 diabetes. The firm already has a
core expertise in diabetes. Collaborating on the research will give its
scientists intimate knowledge of the results.
Moreover, identifying which genes play a role in diabetes doesn't give a
firm an unobstructed path to a blockbuster drug. The company must still
concoct a compound to impact that gene, and then put the drug through years
of clinical trials to prove it is safe and effective. Such an effort costs
hundreds of millions of dollars, giving a large multinational firm like
Novartis many advantages. Based in Basel, Switzerland, Novartis last year
posted revenue of nearly $26 billion and net income of about $5 billion,
making it one of the 10 largest pharmaceutical companies worldwide.
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