A Billion for Brains
Mar 21 2008
Congressman Patrick Kennedy wants the government to spend more money on your brain—and everyone else's.
Scientists estimate that about 100 million Americans will one day develop neurological disorders, and for many of those maladies, treatments either don't exist or could be more effective.
At a press conference in Washington last week, the Rhode Island Democrat unveiled plans for a new National Neurotechnology Initiative that would spend $1 billion over five years to boost brain research, regulation, and drug development.
This comes as a transition is underway from Prozac-era antidepressants and other psychopharmaceuticals to new classes of targeted neurotreatments that are based on the latest scientific understanding of the brain.
Newer classes of drugs now being tested include pills that act on brain receptors that control memory, cognition, mood, inflammation, and more. Turning these receptors up or down can treat a range of diseases, from Alzheimer's to chronic pain. They also introduce a whole new category of drugs that enhance cognition and memory in healthy people by as much as 20 percent, with few side effects.
The problem is that nearly all neurotreatments fail to make it through the long, arduous process of Food and Drug Administration trials. This makes neurotech one of the most costly segments of pharma, with a success rate of about one out of 10 drugs that enter human clinical trials.
"The industry has had a number of drugs that have made a huge difference for patients, but as a business it has been stunningly unsuccessful," says Sam Barondes, director of the Center for Neurobiology and Psychiatry at the University of California at San Francisco and the author of Mood Genes and other popular books on psychiatry and drugs.
The only reason investors put up the billions of dollars needed to sustain these losses is because success in markets for drugs for conditions such as depression and pain can be huge. Some 20 out of 25 leading drugs that treat the central nervous system each generate revenue of more than $1 billion per year.
Many major blockbusters are going off patent, however. Prozac went generic in 2001. This year Wyeth's patent will expire for its antidepressant, Effexor, which has sales of more than $2 billion a year; so will Janssen's Risperidone for schizophrenia, with sales approaching $2 billion a year.
Kennedy's legislation comes out of an effort by a new trade group called the Neurotechnology Industry Organization. It has lately been making a case that there is a separate "neurotech" industry, one that treats tens of millions of people—and reaps $120 billion in revenue annually.
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Kennedy's legislation will ask the federal government to spend $200 million a year for five years. "We believe this money will improve the odds of success," says Zack Lynch, the co-founder and executive director of the Neurotechnology Industry Organization.
Among other things, the bill allocates $30 million to the Food and Drug Administration to train more experts and to improve operations; $80 million to the National Institutes of Health to coordinate neuroresearch efforts, which now fall under 27 different institutes; and $75 million to increase small-business grants for neuro-based companies.
The initiative also includes $10 million to explore the ethical, legal, and social implications of more-powerful mind drugs.
This funding is vital to launch a public debate about a psychosocial shift already underway to medicate every little edge in life—a move that could take us down a path toward Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, where the masses take a drug called soma that keeps them in a happy stupor most of the time.
Pills that enhance are also likely to roil our society if these compounds actually boost the cognition and memory of people who are already smart. As Kennedy's press release said, money is needed to analyze and discuss "issues such as its appropriate use in the criminal justice system, or enhancement of soldier and civilian mental capabilities."
If spending this money seems a no-brainer in a country that is getting older and will suffer from ever more neurological ailments, then I wonder why Kennedy isn't asking for even more money.
The nanotech initiative has so far received over $9 billion in funding. Surely neuro, which impacts 100 million brains in the U.S. alone, deserves as much federal largess as nano—if it is targeted at truly going after the new breakthroughs that will work best.
