This Is MS Multiple Sclerosis Community: Knowledge & Support

[dignan]

It's never good to see a company abandoning the development of new MS treatments. Astrazeneca doesn't have anything in advanced clinical trials at least. I take their announcement to mean they won't be trying to find new things, but the drugs they're already testing will continue. Time will tell.



AstraZeneca CEO hacks at pipeline to up profits

07/11/2007 - AstraZeneca's CEO has said the company will stop research in a number of diseases as it continues to cut costs and restructure in the face of falling sales.

Having just announced net profits were down 15 per cent for the third quarter, David Brennan has said the company will no longer look for drugs to treat hypertension, multiple sclerosis(MS), Parkinson's, insomnia, addiction, neuroprotection in stroke, inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) and functional gastrointestinal disorders.

Speaking at the Credit Suisse 7th Annual Pharma Conference, Brannan said that in order to create a more flexible research and development (R&D) organisation, that can bring better medicines to market faster, the company was fully implementing new disease focus areas.

While the above indications are being dropped, AZ is planning to build up the amount of R&D in diabetes and obesity, pain (analgesia), infection, inhalation, and also increasingly use translational science in its cancer research.

http://www.drugresearcher.com/news/ng.a ... ne-profits