Drug Development and Positron Emission Tomography

Abstract

The last few years have witnessed enormous changes and upheavals in the pharmaceutical industry, with the buying of wholesalers and healthcare distribution networks, almagamations, takeovers, and the loss of tens of thousands of jobs on both sides of the Atlantic. The reason is that it is becoming increasingly difficult to find, develop, and launch new drugs. Once on the market the returns on this research investment are being eroded with a shorter usable patent life, increased government restrictions on prescribing, parallel importation and emphasis towards cheaper generics. There is now a growing gap between the amount spent in drug research and sales growth (Figure 1). Indeed, it has been estimated by Lehman Brothers of London that only 4% of all drugs that are now being developed will reach a break-even sales target of more than $175. Over the last 10 years when money was available there has been a large investment in research with the hope that this would produce more effective medications. Unfortunately it has not been the case, and although it is too early to provide reasons for this failure there is the suggestion that too much effort has been invested in the use of receptor screening and biotechnology without investigating the functional consequences of these interactions in validated animal models. There is therefore a great need to streamline the discovery process to get into man as quickly as possible and find methods that can allow us to extrapolate the findings from animal studies to clinical trials. This brief review describes this process of drug development and how PET may be used advantageously.