[cyberax]

> This story actually checks out, which is quite the condemnation of our American drug development system.

Oh yeah, "corporations", "end-stage capitalism", blah blah.

The reality is that 95+% of drug candidates fail the trials. And a lot of them only fail during the Phase-3 where the efficacy is tested. It's likely that large companies tried it in-house and found that it's either too toxic or is ineffective in-vivo.

[vazma]

I guess you are right but can you please provide a source of the failed trials for this case!

[cyberax]

Looks like there are none, which is the typical result. If you worked in a drug-discovery-adjacent field, this is an utterly normal scenario:

1. University/startup company finds a promising drug candidate that works in-vitro. They make a press-release, researchers write their theses, and move on.

2. Drug companies pick that up and run small-scale tests. These tests are negative, usually because of unexpected toxicity.

Looking at the molecule in question, it's likely what happened here. It's a covalent inhibitor, meaning that it permanently binds with the protein. It's also allosteric, meaning that it binds to the target enzyme but not at the actual active site. This is a huge red flag for toxicity, because it's likely going to bind to other proteins that can have similar configurations.

3. But the underlying idea is sound, so companies keep working on alternative approaches. They are likely looking for non-covalent compounds now, or for things like "suicide inhibitors".

4. You'll see actual trials in 10-15 years after the initial press-release. Most likely for completely different compounds, targeting the same mechanism.

[awesome_dude]

There was what I thought was a breakthrough in Schizophrenia diagnosis and treatment - the University of Washington held that groups of genes acting in concert were causing the disease, and, in fact, there were multiple variants of genes producing (what had always been suspected) different diseases that were bing lumped together.

For the longest time I had been trying to figure out why nobody was taking the research seriously, why there weren't diagnostic kits available that determined which variant people were actually suffering from, and using the appropriate drug regime to manage the specific condition the patient had.

Then, last year I saw a paper being discussed (some 5 - 10 years after the initial paper), and it was building on the Washington research - it appears to me now (keeping in mind that I am a layman and an outsider) that the research /had/ been taken seriously, but it's seen as a signpost on the pathway rather than the destination.