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This article examines strategic issues faced by pharmaceutical companies relating to the development of biomarkers and diagnostics for Alzheimer's disease.
The number of new drugs approved per billion US dollars spent on research and development (R&D) has fallen around 80-fold in inflation-adjusted terms since 1950, despite advances in many of the scientific and technological inputs into the R&D process. Given the apparent lack of impact of proposed solutions to declining R&D efficiency so far, Scannell and colleagues ask whether the underlying problems have been correctly diagnosed and discuss factors that they consider to be the primary causes.
This Perspective highlights the sources and functions as well as the evaluation of biomarkers that are useful in cancer, with a focus on those biomarkers that are most relevant for identifying patients who are likely to respond to a given therapy, and those biomarkers that are most effective for measuring patient response to therapy.
A crucial role of the immune system in cancer progression and response to therapy has recently emerged. Here, Galluzzi and colleagues discuss the immune parameters that may predict the therapeutic response of patients to chemotherapeutics, and review the mechanisms by which current antineoplastic agents activate the immune system against cancer.
Bone continuously undergoes building and degradation — a process known as bone remodelling. This tightly controlled process can be dysregulated by chronic inflammation, and bone loss is commonly associated with inflammatory diseases. Here, Redlich and Smolen discuss the molecular mechanisms mediating the inflammatory loss of bone and present strategies and agents for therapeutic intervention.
