Subject: Biosimulation

Posted by Richard Turnock on 10/4/2004

Message:

Example of simulation saving money

"Even by the time a drug candidate gets to Phase III clinical trials -- the last stage before it reaches the market -- the failure rate still approaches 50%," says James Karis, the CEO of Entelos, the Foster City, California, company that supplies biosimulation technology to Johnson & Johnson. "That's after eight or so years of research. Those failures are very expensive." (Today, the standard figure for bringing a drug to market is between $800 million and $1 billion.) Simulation software will make those failures less painful and help pharmaceutical companies find useful drugs sooner.

Ho's team used biosimulation to reduce the amount of time and the number of patients required for the first phase of clinical trials of a new, as-yet-unannounced drug for Type II diabetes. (Ho estimates that the software, in its first outing, saved between six and eight weeks in trials.) Using sick computers as a stand-in for sick humans is still a new idea that will have to prove its value by contributing to the development of important new drugs. But eventually, Ho predicts, "this will become commonplace. It's a tool we never had before."

Source: http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/74/5tech.html





Richard Turnock

richardturnock@comcast.net