E Sussex, UK --- 19th March 2002 --- Globally, 600
million people suffer from emphysema or chronic obstructive bronchitis,
together known as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). With few
effective treatments, COPD represents one of the major unmet
pharmaceutical markets and consequently some three million dye from the
disease each year. This figure is set to increase over the next two
decades leading to analysts to suggest that COPD will be the 5th most
common cause of death by 2020
To address the growing need to develop improved
treatments of COPD, LeadDiscovery, the drug discovery, development
and transfer consultants, have collaborated with Professor Peter Barnes,
the field leader in the area of airway disease to produce a key state of
the art analysis of COPD, over-viewing current treatment strategies,
critically assessing new therapeutic targets, and suggesting experimental
models and screening architectures most likely to allow these targets to
be exploited.
Despite being a major killer, many people view COPD as
"self-inflicted" with smoking being one of the major causes of
COPD. Hence public opinion has maybe forced research funding towards other
diseases. According to one of the study authors, Dr Jon Goldhill
"this does not appear to be the real reason for lack of progress in
COPD. There are many examples of therapeutic progress in so called
"self-inflicted" diseases. Furthermore, the human and economic
cost of COPD is massive and this is matched by an equally large global
market for COPD treatments, estimated to be as much as US$2.8 billion each
year. These figures firmly suggest that the financial driving force exists
to push the field of COPD therapeutics forwards".
So what is the reason for the inertia surrounding COPD?
Peter Barnes, the other study author has isolated two key problems
relating to COPD research - a lack of understanding of the processes
underlying the progression of COPD - and an absence of predictive
experimental models. The situation is however changing.
One particular area of change is the emergence of
inflammation-based targets. Our understanding of the inflammatory process
has exploded over the past decade and this has contributed to improved
therapies for almost all diseases. COPD is no exception. This is important
for two reasons. First, a host of new potential targets have been
uncovered for COPD and secondly a major unmet indication has now opened up
for companies involved in inflammatory diseases.
Other areas of change include advances in
bronchodilators, tachykinin research, protease inhibitors and retinoic
acid. Each of these advances has helped to uncover possible therapeutic
targets.
Despite the changing environment of COPD research, very
few extensive reviews assessing possible targets for COPD have been
published. Likewise critical analyses of drugs in development or on the
market for COPD are sparse and hence it is difficult and time consuming
for companies to efficiently direct resources to this field. This is
particularly so for companies wishing to look for new indication for their
therapeutic focus. Even if companies do decide to launch COPD-related drug
discovery projects, the choice of experimental models is crucial and once
again only a handful of reviews have addressed this problem.
To address the urgent need for information, in March
2002,
