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Back to Temple Review home pageFEATURED WINTER 2012 ARTICLE

Boosting Big Pharma

The Moulder Center for Drug Discovery Research provides the pharmaceuticalindustry with a much-needed shot in the arm.

By Preston M. Moretz, SCT ’82

Compared to the recent rocky roads ofother U.S. industries — such as theautomotive industry—the field ofprescription drugs might appear to beholding its own: The IMS Institute forHealthcare Informatics reported its total2010 sales to be more than $307 billion.

What that number does not reveal is thatbig pharma suffers from an “innovationgap,” the amount of products—or rather,lack thereof— coming through theindustry pipeline.In 1996, the industry hit its peak, with 56new drugs approved for consumer use bythe U.S. Food and Drug Administration.Since then, new drug approvals havesteadily declined to as few as 18 peryear.

To capture a share of the market,companies typically spend 18 to 20percent of their total profits onresearch and development (R&D).

Magid Abou-Gharbia, director of the Moulder Centerfor Drug Discovery Research, holds more than 350worldwide patents. Photo credit: Joseph V. Labolito

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But a decline of internal resources that have cost the industry more than 300,000jobs over the past decade are affecting the number of products in development.Thus, the innovation gap — and potentially, a dearth of treatments for thosebattling some of the world’s most confounding illnesses, including Alzheimer’sdisease, cancer and AIDS.

Now, big pharma is rethinking its R&D strategy and its business model. It isturning to small biotechnology companies and academic institutions with drugdiscovery centers—such as Temple—to supplement declining R&D resources.

First in the RegionAt Temple, the Moulder Center for Drug Discovery Research helps close theinnovation gap. By combining industry expertise with the exploratory spirit ofacademia—where risks do not depend only on economics—Moulder scientistsresearch new treatments and prepare them for clinical human trials conductedby large pharmaceutical companies.

Magid Abou-Gharbia, director of the Moulder Center, embodies that mixture ofindustry and scholarship. With 26 years at Wyeth Pharmaceuticals and 350worldwide patents under his belt, Abou-Gharbia arrived at Temple in 2008 readyto alter the course of the region’s pharmaceutical industry.

According to the organization Pennsylvania Bio, one in six jobs and 15 percentof the economic activity in greater Philadelphia can be traced to thepharmaceutical and life sciences industries. But the Moulder Center is the firstfully integrated academic drug discovery center in the Philadelphia region, whichis home to so many pharmaceutical companies that it often is considered the“Silicon Valley” of biomedical research and drug discovery.

“Given the economy and all of the industry’s mergers and acquisitions, theinternal resources of pharmaceutical companies have been reduced substantially—they don’t have all the talent they need,” Abou-Gharbia says. “Pharma is nolonger attempting certain drug discovery projects because success isn’tguaranteed. But they are finding that we in academia have much more freedomto take on higher-risk projects.”

The Moulder Center’s pursuit of higher-risk projects also will improve the healthof millions of medical patients.

“There are diseases that are highly risky to pursue, have less than 200,000patients, affect low-income populations and are not considered prevalent,”Abou-Gharbia says. “Pharma is not pursuing drugs for them because ofeconomics. But such drugs are being sought through academic drug discoverycenters.”

Since Lonnie, PHR ’80, and Sharon, PHR ’80, Moulder established the MoulderCenter in the School of Pharmacy in 2008, Abou-Gharbia has overseen its rapidgrowth. What started as a nearly one-man show now is staffed by 12 experienceddrug discovery scientists and is developing local, national and international drugdiscovery research collaborations almost monthly.

For example, Moulder Center researchers are working with Cureveda, a biotechcompany founded by Johns Hopkins University researchers, on the treatment of awide range of oxidative stress-related diseases, including diabetic neuropathy, cardiovasdisease and cancer. This past summer, the center joined forceswith Cortendo—a Sweden-based pharmaceutical company—to target metabolicsyndrome, a combination of medical disorders that, when occurring together,increase the risk of cardiovascular disease and diabetes.


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In collaboration with the University of Rochester Medical Center in New York, theyare fighting several diseases, including bacteria resistance, a persistent threat tothe medical community that affects more than two million patients annually.

“Infection and bacteria resistance to treatment is a major problem in hospitals,”Abou-Gharbia says. “Many people survive surgery only to succumb to a post-opinfection. We’re working with infectious disease biologists to develop drugs thatwill combat this.”

Collaborating for the FutureThe center mainly focuses on identifying biological targets, proteins, enzymes orchemicals in the body that when imbalanced, inhibited or overactivated, can cause diseaFor example, when a person’s level of the chemical serotonin becomes imbalanced in thebrain, he or she suffers from depression. The drug Effexor,developed by Abou-Gharbia at Wyeth, treats depression by restoring serotonin toits proper level.

The number of potential targets has risen over the past 11 years. Since the human genowas deciphered in 2000, biomedical researchers have identified close to5,000 new genes which could be drugable biological targets if they are found tobe the cause of certain diseases. This increases the chances for myriad new drugsand therapies, many for diseases for which there are no or limited treatments. Intoday’s marketplace, fewer than 350 biological targets are addressed by 1,500drugs.

“Once we in academia correlate these new genes to specific diseases, we canpartner with pharma to develop potential new therapies,” Abou-Gharbia says. “For examwhen you look at cancer and some of the gene mutations that were found, cancer drugstherapies were able to be developed because researchers couldconnect those genes and mutations to the disease.”

After a biological target is determined to be the cause of a disease, Moulder Centerresearchers work to identify molecules that will interact with the target and alter its activWhen such molecules are found, the researchers generate compounds thataffect the target successfully, and then test the new drug in the lab to determineits suitability for clinical testing in humans. If the drug passes, high-quality samplesare produced for human testing by a partnering pharmaceutical company.

According to Abou-Gharbia, over the next several years, the Moulder Center willwork toward developing lead molecules that effectively fight diseases such asAlzheimer’s, AIDS and cancer. Temple researchers will prepare the compounds fortesting, readying them for a midsize or multinational pharmaceutical company todevelop them into drugs.

“Because academic drug discovery centers like Moulder are discovering tomorrow’sdrugs by combining the innovation of academia with the resources of industry,people will have access to new and better drugs,” Abou-Gharbia says. “That’s theway of the future.”

Preston M. Moretz, SCT ’82, is a staff writer in University Communications at Temple.

Joint Efforts

The Moulder Center supports approximately one dozen Temple researchers onprojects, including:

Rodrigo Andrade, assistant professor of chemistry in the College of Science and


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Technology, whose molecules the center uses to explore cancer and antibacterialactivity.

Mark Feitelson, professor of biology in the College of Science and Technology, whois working on new therapies for the hepatitis B virus.

Salim Merali, associate professor of biochemistry at the Fels Institute for CancerResearch and Molecular Biology in the School of Medicine, who is working onidentifying compounds that inhibit the proliferation of prostate cancer cells.

Domenico Praticò, associate professor of pharmacology in the School of Medicine,who studies Alzheimer’s disease.

Copyright © 2012 Temple University


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