Technology found effective in avoiding false positives in drug testing.

Stem cell technology might help in avoiding the false positives depicted by many drugs during preclinical drug testing.

So states a new report from Kalorama Information, ‘Stem Cells: Worldwide Markets for Transplantation, Cord Blood Banking and Drug Development.’ The study shows that stem cell technology might help in providing more accurate and efficient results during pre-clinical drug testing. This technology would do away with animal tests and would help drug manufacturers to save millions. 

Any new drug costs in excess of $1 billion and requires more than 14 years for its discovery and commercialization. Furthermore, early toxicity testing is a significant problem since there are no good models to ensure whether a drug is toxic or not. At times some unsafe products get through the testing only to be pulled back from the market later at a huge expense, states the report. Researchers estimate that more than 90 percent of the drugs in clinical development are not marketable due to lack of effectiveness or side-effects not detected in animal tests.

The report proposes that the stem cell-based drug development technologies would provide a solution to this problem. However, stem technology is in its early stage of development and would not be available before 2012 at the earliest.

‘The excitement around stem cells has understandably been in the potential for therapy, but drug development is where they may have the most impact on health care,’ comments Bruce Carlson, publisher of Kalorama Information.  ‘Stem cell technology could provide a virtually endless supply of liver or heart cells for testing, saving developers tens, if not hundreds of millions of dollars in direct testing fees, as well as indirect costs related to drug recalls.’

GlaxoSmithKline, AstraZeneca and Roche established a new venture in 2007, ‘Stem Cells for Safer Medicines Ltd,’ to benefit from the stem cell technologies. They aim to use human cells to screen for potentially dangerous side effects of new drugs before they go into clinical trials.

For full access to the report go to:

www.kaloramainformation.com/Stem-Cells-Worldwide-1597988/.