Merck marks another setback in the search for drugs for Parkinson's disease
By: Ryan McBride
Published in: FIERCE BIOTECH
Merck has halted one of its most advanced efforts to develop a drug treatment for Parkinson's disease.
A phase 3 clinical trial of PREDALENAT for this nervous system disorder showed no benefit over placebo,
What convinced the pharmaceutical giant to stop further experiments with the A2A receptor agonist and abandon the plans to submit for approval by the FDA.
The announcement of the halt in development was accompanied by good news about the supply pipeline of new products in research and development stages,
When an advisory team to the FDA recommended approving Merck's drug for sleep disorders SUVOREXANT. Although in the later stages of research,
PRELADENANT was not one of Merck's promising drugs. According to estimates analysts predicted that the drug
It will only bring in $200 million a year starting in 2018, wrote Mark Scheinbaum, an analyst from the ISI Group for investors.
Despite the fall of PRELADENANT, it highlights the difficulty of finding new treatments for Parkinson's disease,
Affecting about a million people in the United States is a chronic disease that has no treatment.
Merck tested PRELADENANT in three phase 3 clinical trials. In two of them the drug was combined with levodopa and the third
Only PRELADENANT. None of the trials showed a benefit.
"Parkinson's disease is a very complicated disease, which makes it difficult to develop new drugs to treat the disease and the same applies to new therapeutic approaches"
says Dr. David Michaelson, vice president of clinical research of the nervous system and the eye at Merck. "We are committed
For nervous system research and we will analyze the information further analyzes to inform the scientific community to help
In her efforts to find new approaches to the treatment of serious diseases.
Mark gave up multi-approaches to treat Parkinson's disease, in which dopamine-producing brain cells die, which leads to a loss of control over movement.
Last month, the company approved the study of an NR2B antagonist, called MK-0657.
After working on the substance as a cure for Parkinson's disease. Baltimore-based CERECOR has been granted permission to test MK-0657
for other neurological diseases.
In the meantime, the research of the disease received good support from Michael J. Fox, the patient with the disease, the foundation he established granted 325 million dollars
For stem cell research and other possible drugs. One of the founders of Google, Sergey Brin,
The bearer of a gene that increases the risk of getting Parkinson's disease has donated millions of dollars of his personal fortune to the research of gene therapy for the disease.
