It seems paradoxical that, as medical scientists make huge advances in discovering the mechanisms of common diseases, fewer and fewer innovative drugs are reaching the market. Indeed, the pharmaceutical industry worldwide is in difficulty -- it is becoming harder and harder to make new drugs. But there is one major exception to this trend. New drugs for cancer continue to be developed, often remarkably quickly.
In 2002, researchers at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute found that the gene BRAF was mutated in the majority of patients with the skin cancer malignant melanoma. In 2011 a new drug, vemurafenib, targeted to mutations in BRAF, was licensed for therapy. Why is cancer therapy different when it comes to speedy approval of drugs?
By: Mark Walport, Edited by: Ian Steadman
Continue reading...Source: http://www.wired.co.uk/magazine/archive/2012/08/ideas-bank/the-precautionary-principle-can-be-deadly
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