Would You Cure A Profitable Disease?

"The Goose That Lays the Golden Egg?

The Story of INGAP

... let’s look at the powerhouse diabetes company Eli Lilly.

In 1997, Lilly licensed INGAP, a protein discovered by Dr. Aaron Vinik of Eastern Virginia Medical School, which was deemed to have potential as A CURE FOR BOTH TYPE 1 AND TYPE 2. INGAP causes the regeneration of beta cells in the pancreas and has the potential to be a truly innovative treatment for diabetes.

Early clinical tests carried out by Lilly were quite successful. Vinik reports that animal studies showed a 30 to 40 percent reversal rate of diabetes.

“It is really the first opportunity to change the biology of diabetes,” he says. “INGAP wakes up sleeping pancreases.”

In 1999, however, Lilly dropped INGAP from its portfolio. According to Vinik, it was not the Science that the people at Lilly lost interest in.

“They said, ‘We love the science, but we don’t think that it is a good business model,’” he recalls.

It was the business office that called Vinik to tell him that INGAP had been dropped.

Lilly does not deny these claims.

“INGAP was part of our portfolio, and during ongoing review of our priorities, it was decided we would drop it,” states Dr. John Holcombe, medical adviser for Lilly research laboratories. “It was a very tough decision. It wasn’t dropped because it wasn’t showing promise. A lot of the things we do show promise, but we just can’t do everything. We had to make a tough decision, and other things became more important than INGAP. You just don’t have unlimited resources.”

Lilly, which generates $2.29 billion a year in revenue from its line of diabetes products, asserts that its money is put back into research and development for a host of diabetes treatments, including inhalable insulin and a series of treatments for diabetes-related complications.

“Even with good control, people are not immune to complications,” Holcombe notes, adding that drugs to combat eye, kidney and nerve damage will play an important role in Lilly’s future. In fact, Lilly has licensed from Vinik a compound that treats neuropathy.

Jeanne Spicer, who has had type 2 for six months, is not surprised that Lilly dropped INGAP.

“I think we are very close to a cure for both type 1 and type 2, but that may mean the money tree dries up for the drug companies,” she speculates. “Therefore, I think there is more time and effort spent on better treatments than searching for a cure.”

Holcombe admits that Lilly is not actively seeking cures for diabetes. But he rejects the notions that people such as Leahy and Spicer propose-that Lilly does not want a cure to be found.

“It’s very self-serving to think that way. People who think that know nothing about the hearts of the people who work at Lilly.”

While the human heart is inscrutable, Lilly’s numbers are available on its Web site. And these numbers indicate that they do take in a lot of money from diabetes products:

Humulin insulins: $1 billion a year
Humalog insulin analog: $834.2 million a year
Actos: $391.7 million a year
If, say, 30 to 40 percent of the people who take those drugs no longer needed them, Lilly would lose close to a billion dollars a year in revenues. And that doesn’t include all the drugs that remain in the pipeline to treat the manifold complications.

However, even Public Citizen’s Sasich, who is far from an apologist for the pharmaceutical industry, doesn’t think the logic holds up.

“There are too many ‘ifs’ here. Maybe they dropped INGAP because they had another similar product. Maybe they had to reinvest in infrastructure.”

Also, Sasich points out, using Leahy’s own logic, “if they did find a potential cure, they would certainly pursue it. They could charge whatever they wanted for it.”

It would be far worse for a company like Lilly if another pharmaceutical company came up with a cure for diabetes, he argues, because then that company would rake in the cash, and Lilly would lose its business anyway.

From:
http://www.diabeteshealth.com/read/2008/06/11/3162.html
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