Big Pharma losing sleep over stem cell approval?

[Kaye]

This is how much stem cell companies think about our pain and suffering. Sickening. Check out the last paragraph if you don't read a word. This is medicine at its worse and the ISSCR and the FDA think that Dr. Centeno's treatment should be stopped. This is our government working for the drug companies and earning a salary from the taxpayers to do it!

http://www.actcblog.com/2010/08/a-wa...-research.html

Anyone reading this is no doubt aware of the fact that Geron (Nasdaq: GERN) just received FDA approval for the first human embryonic stem cell (hESC)-based human clinical trial, targeting spinal cord injuries.

This approval is great news for the industry, and is clearly a watershed moment for the regenerative medicine sector and embryonic stem cell research. The news received coverage from major media outlets in the US and abroad, much of which also discussed ACT?s RPE program using hESCs, for which it anticipates FDA approval this year (ACT news and media coverage here).

Less discussed, though, is the bigger picture. Not many commentators thus far have stepped far back and taken a look at what this approval could mean for the pharmaceutical industry over the long-term. Over half a trillion dollars (yes, trillion) worldwide is spent on pharmaceuticals each year. If hESC-based therapies fulfill their promise, they will offer actual cures for a variety of debilitating diseases and conditions, potentially tapping into a chunk of this massive annual expenditure, and saving untold tens of billions of dollars in medical and related expenditures in the process.

Drew Voros, Business Editor of the Oakland Tribune (Oakland, Calif.) recently took a hard look at this and related issues. Full Story; Voros: Drugmakers losing sleep over Geron?s stem-cell test, and highlights from his piece follow.

You?ve seen those TV commercials where someone lying awake in bed stares wide-eyed at the ceiling as if sleep will never come. Then, a patient spouse rises and pushes a pill from the gods ofslumber. The blurb ends with a deep-sleeping signoff.

Some folks in the pharmaceutical industry began wrestling with their own insomnia last week, but a simple pill won?t cure their newfound anxiety. Sleep becomes elusive when game-changing possibilities challenge your hugely profitable business.

Last Friday, Menlo Park-based Geron said that federal regulators will let it proceed with the world?s first human test of a treatment made from embryonic stem cells. Success in this preliminary safety trial could bring a type of health care reform that sounds like science fiction: drugless cures and treatments.

Imagine the obsolescence of pharmaceuticals for thousands of health problems. Of course, the savings would be astronomical, not to mention the quality of life would improve for millions of people. This is why drugmakers are losing sleep. Cures for diseases and serious injuries will be horrible for business.

But what is revolutionary about last week?s news is not the science but the fact the United States government has finally approved a test using stem cells on humans. The game is truly on, and the potential for change is great.

This is just the beginning [...] Beyond the effects of injury and disease, patients also suffer from secondary conditions for which pharmaceutical companies market thousands of drugs.

Treating the millions of Americans who suffer from spinal cord injuries costs our health care system hundreds of billions of dollars.

If you like math, multiply that savings by the number of diseases that embryonic stem cell treatments might be able to cure. You can start to see how profound this change to health care economics would be.

We are still many years away from someone walking onto ?Oprah? to explain how stem cells cured his or her paralysis, or how stem cell treatments wiped out a child?s diabetes. But if drugmakers want to sleep easier, they should consider investing in stem-cell research before their pills become obsolete.