Can better cognitive testing platforms accelerate pharma’s Alzheimer’s research and development efforts?

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Alzheimer’s cure behind the boom in brain sci­ence (Finan­cial Review):

Bio­gen is one of many mem­bers of big phar­ma seek­ing the block­buster drug which will inevitably be worth mul­ti­ple bil­lions of dol­lars. Big phar­ma in the US spends about $US5 bil­lion a year on Alzheimer’s research and development.

Expo­nen­tial growth in the dis­ease over the past decade has not been accom­pa­nied by the devel­op­ment of approved drugs. In fact, not a sin­gle new drug for Alzheimer’s has been approved in the past 10 years in the Unit­ed States, accord­ing to a report pub­lished this week by the Mass­a­chu­setts Insti­tute of Tech­nol­o­gy. About 5 mil­lion Amer­i­cans suf­fer from AD and that is pro­ject­ed to dou­ble in com­ing decades.

How­ev­er, Smith says the con­tin­u­ing boom in clin­i­cal tri­als pro­vides growth oppor­tu­ni­ties for com­pa­nies that can stream­line the test­ing process.

A prob­lem with AD is that once the patient is suf­fer­ing from the dis­ease it is too late for the drug treat­ment to assist. The ear­li­er the cog­ni­tive impair­ment can be iden­ti­fied the better.

That leads Smith into rec­om­mend­ing investors seri­ous­ly con­sid­er an Aus­tralian list­ed com­pa­ny called Cogstate. It told the mar­ket this week that the total val­ue of sales con­tracts signed in the fis­cal year to date is $US21.9 mil­lion, mak­ing this the most suc­cess­ful finan­cial year for sales con­tracts. The sales are up from $US9 mil­lion dur­ing the pre­vi­ous finan­cial year.”

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About SharpBrains

SHARPBRAINS is an independent think-tank and consulting firm providing services at the frontier of applied neuroscience, health, leadership and innovation.
SHARPBRAINS es un think-tank y consultoría independiente proporcionando servicios para la neurociencia aplicada, salud, liderazgo e innovación.

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