Bob traveled to Washington DC yesterday to use a Senate hearing as a platform to implore government action on Alzheimer’s, a disease on which the drugmaker has spent about $450 million during the past five years. And the Wyeth ceo argues Alzheimer’s requires the same kind of national response that was given to AIDS starting in the 1980s.

“There is no national focus,” he told the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions subcommittee on aging. “What we need is a sense of commitment analogous to that which arose around AIDS or avian flu…The war has not been won, but we have made significant progress - progress that is lacking on the Alzheimer’s front.”

Bob says that research and drug development for Alzheimer’s is moving at “too slow a pace,” and that regulatory agencies, he says, “sometimes deal with Alzheimer’s in the cautious way they do with diseases where major therapeutic options already exist.” There needs to be “a sense of urgency” and “epidemic-strength resources” from government.

In other words, money. And he would like Congress to pass legislation that would double the Alzheimer’s budget at the National Institutes of Health to $1.3 billion a year, from $640 million. Bob also wants the FDA to grant priority review to Alzheimer’s drugs - permission to get them out the door faster.

All of this is laudable, but should the FDA put any Wyeth drug on a faster track? Given Wyeth’s sorry manufacturing record - one plant operates under a consent decree and several others have come under intense FDA scrutiny for quality control failures - this may be the last company that deserves faster reviews. How does the public know the drugs will be made safely?

Of course, given the extent to which Alzheimer’s affects society, Bob may be counting on short memories.

Source: The Star-Ledger of New Jersey
Further reading…
Essner’s Washington Post editorial;
Reuters: Wyeth exec calls research a long shot.[tags]Alzheimer’s, Wyeth[/tags]