The search for a cure for Alzheimer’s disease suffered a ‘heavy blow’ after Pfizer, the world’s largest drugs company, announced it was halting research efforts into finding new treatments.

The US based company is expected to cut 300 jobs globally.

It follows years of failed drugs trials for Alzheimer’s treatments which have cost the company dearly.

Dr James Pickett, Head of Research at the Alzheimer’s Society, said: “It’s disappointing to hear that Pfizer, one of the world’s leading pharmaceutical companies, will be terminating their research efforts in neuroscience, including Alzheimer’s disease drug discovery.

“This will come as a heavy blow to the estimated 46.8 million people currently living with the condition across the globe.”

However charities said there were still reasons to be hopeful that new treatments will found.</s>Pfizer Inc is abandoning research to find new drugs aimed at treating Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease, the U.S. pharmaceutical company announced on Saturday.

NEW YORK: Pfizer Inc is abandoning research to find new drugs aimed at treating Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease, the U.S. pharmaceutical company announced on Saturday.

The company said it expects to eliminate 300 positions from the neuroscience discovery and early development programs in Andover and Cambridge, Massachusetts, and Groton, Connecticut, as it redistributes the money spent on research, according to the emailed statement.

Pfizer is not making any changes to research and development funding for tanezumab, which is marketed as a treatment for joint pain from osteoarthritis, fibromyalgia treatment Lyrica, or its rare disease program.

"This was an exercise to re-allocate spend across our portfolio, to focus on those areas where our pipeline, and our scientific expertise, is strongest," the company said.

Pfizer has invested heavily in research for Parkinson's and Alzheimer's, and is one of several drugmakers, along with GlaxoSmithKline and Eli Lilly, that is part of the Dementia Discovery Fund, a venture capital fund launched in 2015 by industry and government groups that seeks to develop treatments for Alzheimer's.

However, some of Pfizer's investments have resulted in disappointment. In 2012, Pfizer and partner Johnson & Johnson called off additional work on the drug bapineuzumab after it failed to help patients with mild to moderate Alzheimer's in its second round of clinical trials.

The company said on Saturday that it will launch a new venture fund to invest in neuroscience research projects.

Pfizer is expected to make a presentation on Monday at the JP Morgan healthcare conference in San Francisco, a key annual event for healthcare investors.</s>Pfizer Inc is abandoning research to find new drugs aimed at treating Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease, the U.S. pharmaceutical company has announced.

The company said it expects to eliminate 300 positions from the neuroscience discovery and early development programs in Andover and Cambridge, Massachusetts, and Groton, Connecticut, as it redistributes the money spent on research, according to the emailed statement.

Pfizer is not making any changes to research and development funding for tanezumab, which is being tested as a treatment for joint pain from osteoarthritis, fibromyalgia treatment Lyrica, or its rare disease program.

“This was an exercise to re-allocate spend across our portfolio, to focus on those areas where our pipeline, and our scientific expertise, is strongest,” the company said on Saturday.

Pfizer has invested heavily in research for Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s, and is one of several drugmakers, along with GlaxoSmithKline and Eli Lilly, that is part of the Dementia Discovery Fund, a venture capital fund launched in 2015 by industry and government groups that seeks to develop treatments for Alzheimer’s.

However, some of Pfizer’s investments have resulted in disappointment. In 2012, Pfizer and partner Johnson & Johnson called off additional work on the drug bapineuzumab after it failed to help patients with mild to moderate Alzheimer’s in its second round of clinical trials.

The company said on Saturday that it will launch a new venture fund to invest in neuroscience research projects.</s>The world's largest drugs company Pfizer is abandoning research into finding a treatment for Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease after a 'series of failures'.

The company is getting rid of 300 jobs from its neuroscience discovery and early development programs in Andover and Cambridge in the UK, and Massachusetts, Groton and Connecticut in the US.

Despite investing heavily in trying to cure both diseases, the US drugs giant has now decided to redistribute funding to other areas it deems more likely to produce results.

A Pfizer spokesman said: 'This was an exercise to re-allocate spend across our portfolio, to focus on those areas where our pipeline, and our scientific expertise, is strongest.'

Commenting on the decision, Dr James Pickett, Head of Research at the Alzheimer's Society, told The Daily Telegraph it comes as a 'heavy blow' to the millions of people worldwide living with both conditions.

He told the newspaper: 'It's disappointing to hear that Pfizer, one of the world's leading pharmaceutical companies, will be terminating their research efforts in neuroscience, including Alzheimer's disease drug discovery.

'This will come as a heavy blow to the estimated 46.8 million people currently living with the condition across the globe.'

Pfizer has invested millions into research for Parkinson's and Alzheimer's, and is one of several drugmakers, along with GlaxoSmithKline and Eli Lilly, which are part of the Dementia Discovery Fund, a capital venture launched by industry and government groups to develop treatments.

Unfortunately their efforts have been largely in vain, with several drugs tested in the last few years reaching the final stage of trials - only to prove ineffective.

In 2012, Pfizer and its partner Johnson & Johnson called off additional work on the drug bapineuzumab after it failed to help patients with mild to moderate Alzheimer's in its second round of clinical trials.

With a million Brits expected to have dementia of some form by 2025, a drug that cures the condition or manages symptoms could be worth billions.

Parkinson's Disease is also still incurable and remains somewhat a mystery to medics.

Producing a treatment for it would also be very lucrative.

The drugs giant is not, however, making any changes to research and development funding for tanezumab, which is being tested as a treatment for joint pain from osteoarthritis, fibromyalgia treatment Lyrica, or its rare disease program.

The company said over the weekend that it will launch a new venture fund to invest in neuroscience research projects.

Pfizer is expected to make a presentation on Monday at the JP Morgan healthcare conference in San Francisco, a key annual event for healthcare investors.</s>Pfizer has announced plans to end its research efforts to discover new drugs for Alzheimer's and Parkinson's diseases. The pharmaceutical giant explained its decision, which will entail roughly 300 layoffs, as a move to better position itself "to bring new therapies to patients who need them."

"As a result of a recent comprehensive review, we have made the decision to end our neuroscience discovery and early development efforts and re-allocate [spending] to those areas where we have strong scientific leadership and that will allow us to provide the greatest impact for patients," Pfizer said in a statement emailed to NPR.

Pfizer added that it will "continue to fully support" development on tanezumab and Lyrica, two treatments targeting chronic pain, as well as programs researching rare neurological diseases.

The round of several hundred layoffs "will take place over the coming months" at its research and development labs in the Northeast — specifically, sites in Cambridge and Andover, Mass., and in Groton, Conn.

"Any decision impacting colleagues is difficult; however, we believe this will best position the company to bring meaningful new therapies to market, and will bring the most value for shareholders and patients."

The decision is likely to come as a blow not only to Pfizer employees, but also the millions of people worldwide suffering from Alzheimer's and Parkinson's, two neurodegenerative disorders that target memory and motor functions, respectively. Neither has a known cure — and, as British neuroscientist Joseph Jebelli recently told Fresh Air, current treatments have proved far less than ideal.

"The current medication for Alzheimer's disease is approved, essentially, because it's better than nothing," Jebelli said last week.

"These drugs were pioneered in the '70s and '80s and they treat the symptoms, as opposed to the underlying biology. And we found that in about 60 percent of patients these drugs will delay the symptoms by about six months to a year. And that is certainly better than nothing. ... But six months to a year is just simply not good enough."

Despite heavily funding research efforts into potential treatments in the past, Pfizer has faced high-profile disappointment in recent years, as Reuters notes: "In 2012, Pfizer and partner Johnson & Johnson (JNJ.N) called off additional work on the drug bapineuzumab after it failed to help patients with mild to moderate Alzheimer's in its second round of clinical trials."

Another potential treatment for neurodegenerative disorders — this one developed by Axovant, another pharmaceutical company — also found itself recently abandoned. The company dropped its experimental drug intepirdine after it failed to improve motor function in patients with a certain form of dementia — just three months after it also failed to show positive effects in Alzheimer's patients.

The stock prices of both Pfizer and Axovant fell Monday on news of the companies' decisions. As The Wall Street Journal reports, treatments for Alzheimer's and Parkinson's diseases are seen as a crucial beacon of hope for patients and their families. And with an estimated 5.5 million people suffering from Alzheimer's in the U.S. and about half a million Americans suffering from Parkinson's, these treatments are seen by many in the pharmaceutical industry and other market watchers as having "multibillion-dollar sales potential," the Journal says.

And so, the paper explains, other companies plan to carry these efforts forward:

Pfizer also notes it plans to "create a dedicated neuroscience venture fund to support continued efforts to advance the field."

In the meantime, Jebelli said hope persists for patients and researchers alike.

"Just the last few years alone have seen some serious breakthroughs in Alzheimer's research," he said. "Ten years should be enough time for us to develop, if not a cure, certainly a much better treatment than what we have at the moment."</s>Pfizer, the world's third largest drug maker, has announced it is ending research to discover new medications for Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease.

The move, which will eliminate hundreds of research positions across the pharmaceutical giant's roster, casts an even darker shadow outside the company – dashing the hopes of millions affected by neurological disorders, whose dreams of finding a treatment just got that much more desperate.

"As a result of a recent comprehensive review, we have made the decision to end our neuroscience discovery and early development efforts and re-allocate [spending] to those areas where we have strong scientific leadership and that will allow us to provide the greatest impact for patients," the company said in a statement to NPR.

Job reductions primarily in Massachusetts and Connecticut are expected to occur across the next several months, although the company is continuing research into rare neurological diseases, and plans to launch a venture fund committed to neuroscience.

To many, though, those gestures won't replace the loss of some 300 neuroscientists and associated staff in an organisation that bills itself as "the world's largest research-based pharmaceutical company".

"Any decision impacting colleagues is difficult," the company's statement reads.

"[H]owever, we believe this will best position the company to bring meaningful new therapies to market, and will bring the most value for shareholders and patients."

Of course, value for shareholders is one thing; but for patients, especially those affected by neurological diseases (and their families), it's quite another, as critics of Pfizer's new direction are eager to make clear.

"[W]ith no new drug for dementia in the last 15 years, this will come as a heavy blow to the estimated 46.8 million people currently living with the condition across the globe," says the head of research at the UK's Alzheimer's Society, James Pickett.

"Every three seconds someone in the world develops dementia and, with this number set to rise, there has never been a more important time for such life-saving research."

That's especially so since the best, mostly ineffective medications we have for conditions like Alzheimer's are in fact the products of research from decades ago.

While there are strong hopes they can be improved upon – and treatments for Parkinson's and other neurological conditions too – until more research is done, a hoped-for, effective replacement won't materialise.

"The current medication for Alzheimer's disease is approved, essentially, because it's better than nothing. There's nothing else at the moment," neuroscientist Joseph Jebelli told NPR last week.

"These drugs were pioneered in the '70s and '80s and they treat the symptoms, as opposed to the underlying biology."

Of course, one company announcing the closure of one wing of medical research doesn't signal the end of other scientists working in that field – but in light of Pfizer's dismaying decision, some commentators are wondering what this means for the rest of the big pharma landscape in terms of neuroscience research.

"It's really alarming to see such a large pharmaceutical company deciding to abandon research into the brain and central nervous system," chief scientific officer at the Parkinson's Foundation, James Beck, told the Los Angeles Times.

"[H]aving Pfizer exit does not augur well for what other companies are likely to do."

That's especially so since Pfizer's decision follows a series of clinical failures by other companies pursuing Alzheimer's research – developments that can be extremely costly for the companies invested in the trials.

We'll have to wait and see what happens here – and hope the companies committing to this research keep focussed on what's really at stake here.

"[N]euroscience research is high risk, in that failure for pharmaceutical companies comes at a high price,"Alzheimer's Research's director of policy, Matthew Norton, told The Times.

"[But] the potential benefits of success to the millions of people around the world living with dementia are too great to ignore."</s>Having been at the helm of a leading celiac disease patient advocacy organization –Beyond Celiac – for the last 15 years, now, more than ever, I wonder: What do we have to do to demonstrate that our lives are worth saving? How long will we suffer before there are better treatments, and ultimately, a cure?

Celiac disease, with a prevalence of about 1 percent and mortality rate of 1.3, received about $3 million per year. Meanwhile, Crohn’s disease, which had the second lowest prevalence at .25 percent and a mortality rate of 1.1, received about $16 million per year. And Crohn’s disease already has a number of available and emerging treatment options, while celiac disease has only had the gluten-free diet for decades.

Don’t get me wrong. This isn’t a contest. But, in general, NIH support is seen as essential for improving the understanding of health and disease. So doesn’t it seem wrong that a disease that is more prevalent and which has worse outcomes receives less than a fifth of the research attention from the NIH?

A recent commentary in the journal Gastroenterology found that NIH funding, which is the major source of support for research in inflammatory gastrointestinal diseases, showed no association between the estimated prevalence or mortality rates of a disease. The review included celiac disease, irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), Crohn’s disease, eosinophilic esophagitis (EoE), Barrett’s esophagus and non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD).

The review authors noted that the inequity of funding is apparent when mortality rates are considered. IBS and NALFD, neither of which is associated with increased mortality, still receive more funding than celiac disease.

And it’s not because the gluten-free diet, the only treatment for celiac disease, is so awesome, because it’s not. Patients feel the burden of celiac disease is so great that in one survey, the only other condition that ranked at the same level of difficulty was end stage renal disease. And for many, the gluten-free diet is an incomplete and unreliable treatment at best. Celiac disease affects me and all other patients every day, at every meal, at work, at school, and at social functions. The idea that diet is enough was not an excuse when additional treatments for other conditions that partially rely on diet were developed, funded and approved. Imagine how hard it would be to manage high cholesterol or heart disease simply through diet and you have an idea of what celiac disease patients face every day.

NIH has the power to encourage research in desired areas. The authors noted that EoE funding experienced an upward trend, “possibly owing to program announcements and requests for applications put out by the NIH.” The last request for funding applications for celiac disease was made by NIH 18 years ago.

Some possible reasons for the disparity in NIH funding cited by the authors include varying numbers of established research programs to recruit young investigators, fewer grants submitted because of a lack of investigators in the field because of poor funding, and narrow expertise of the peer reviews on NIH review committees.

In contrast to the diseases that get low funding, Crohn’s disease has ample public and private funding. This allows for extensive research, which in turn, favors more awards. “This may seem circuitous. However, funding of Crohn’s disease research provides an example of the way in which success breeds success,” the authors wrote.

They conclude that intervention is necessary to improve the existent disparities in disease funding and urge national authorities to take notice and address the inequity to “improve progress across all gastrointestinal diseases and improve the quality of life for patients and their families.”

Simply put, celiac disease is inexcusably neglected. It is insidious and our community is invisible. We need to get loud. We need to combine our voices in a way that researchers and policy makers will hear it – through our collective stories and outcry.

We can move the needle, but only if we can tell the real story about our lives before, during and after diagnosis. If you have celiac disease, make your voice be heard by joining Go Beyond Celiac. This online patient platform is designed to bring patients and scientists together to speed progress on celiac disease research. There are promising leads for treatments beyond the gluten-free diet, but progress will continue to lag without our participation.</s>Pfizer Inc. said Saturday it will stop trying to discover new drugs for Alzheimer’s disease and Parkinson’s disease, abandoning costly but futile efforts to find effective treatments for the disorders.

The cutback will result in layoffs of 300 employees in Cambridge and Andover in Massachusetts and in Groton, Conn., over several months, according to a company statement.

The restructuring won’t affect later-stage drug development for pain treatments Lyrica and tanezumab, or research into drugs for rare neurological diseases, Pfizer said.

The company plans to use the savings to fund drug R&D in other areas. “This was an exercise to reallocate [spending] across our portfolio, to focus on those areas where our pipeline, and our scientific expertise, is strongest,” it said. Like several peers, Pfizer PFE, +0.19% has invested heavily in developing treatments for Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s because of the huge need, but met disappointment when once-promising compounds failed to work during testing.

An expanded version of this report appears on WSJ.com.

Pfizer ends hunt for drugs to treat Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s.

Does music help you fall asleep?</s>Pfizer Inc. said Saturday it will stop trying to discover new drugs for Alzheimer's disease and Parkinson's disease, abandoning costly but futile efforts to find effective treatments for the disorders.

The cutback will result in layoffs of 300 employees in Cambridge and Andover in Massachusetts and in Groton, Conn., over several months, according to a company statement.

The restructuring won't affect later-stage drug development for pain treatments Lyrica and tanezumab, or research into drugs for rare neurological diseases, Pfizer said.

The company plans to use the savings to fund drug R&D in other areas. "This was an exercise to reallocate [spending] across our portfolio, to focus on those areas where our pipeline, and our scientific expertise, is strongest," it said.

Pfizer also said it plans to establish a corporate venture fund to invest in promising neuroscience projects outside the company.

Like several peers, Pfizer has invested heavily in developing treatments for Alzheimer's and Parkinson's because of the huge need, but met disappointment when once-promising compounds failed to work during testing.

Notably, in 2012, Pfizer and partner Johnson & Johnson halted development of an Alzheimer's drug called bapineuzumab after it failed to slow memory loss in test subjects.

Other companies, such as AstraZeneca PLC, Biogen Inc. and Eli Lilly & Co., keep pursuing Alzheimer's treatment, but analysts consider the projects very risky.</s>Pfizer announced Saturday, Jan. 6, that it was abandoning research and development into new neuroscience development, including Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease. As a result, it will cut 300 jobs, primarily in Cambridge and Andover, Massachusetts and in Groton, Connecticut. About 200 of the job cuts will be in Massachusetts, the remaining in Connecticut.

The company indicated it will continue working on tanezumab, a late-stage drug for pain it is developing with Eli Lilly and Co., as well as Lyrica, for fibromyalgia. It also intends to continue working on developing neurological drugs for rare diseases.

In a statement, Pfizer said, “This was an exercise to re-allocate spend across our portfolio, to focus on those areas where our pipeline, and our scientific expertise, is strongest.”

Pfizer is one of the investors in a venture capital fund, the Dementia Discovery Fund, that was launched in 2015. Other drug companies that invest in the fund include GlaxoSmithKline and Lilly. Reuters notes, “However, some of Pfizer’s investments have resulted in disappointment. In 2012, Pfizer and partner Johnson & Johnson called off additional work on the drug bapineuzumab after it failed to help patients with mild to moderate Alzheimer’s in its second round of clinical trials.”

On Saturday, Pfizer indicated it plans to launch a new venture fund focused on neuroscience research.

The company also announced today that it was creating the Innovative Target Exploration Network (ITEN). This is a new, early-stage partnering model. It will allow collaborative relationships with specific academic institutions and principal investigators globally. The first three institutions to participate are The University of Cambridge and University of Oxford, both in the UK, and the University of Texas Southwestern (UTSW). Pfizer is planning to choose other academic institutions to be part of ITEN.

Each network is managed by an External Scientific Innovation Lead (ESIL) from Pfizer. That individual will liaise between researchers from Pfizer and the academic principal investigators from the involved institutions.

“The ITEN partnering model creates an environment of creative and agile scientific interaction,” said Uwe Schoenbeck, Pfizer’s senior vice president and chief scientific officer, External Science & Innovation, in a statement. “By establishing relationships with researchers early in the research and development process, we believe the ITEN model will better position us to identify potentially promising research projects—focused on seeking unique technology platforms and outstanding biology expertise—continually building on our mission to bring innovative new therapies to patients in need.”

The UK ITEN partnerships were established in 2017, and specific projects have already been reported. Both will focus on deubiquitinylation enzymes (DUBs), a gene family that has implications for cancer, and autoimmune, cardio-metabolic diseases and rare diseases.

The project with UTSW is a collaboration with Bruce Beutler, a Novel Prize-winning immunologist. It will focus on genetics approaches in oncology and metabolic disease.

The ITEN is expected to complement work at Pfizer’s Centers for Therapeutic Innovation (CTI), which was launched by Pfizer in 2010 to create academic-foundation-industry collaborations. CTI has 25 academic institutions and six foundations in its network, including the National Institute of Health (NIH).

“By focusing on research collaborations around early biology and therapeutic concepts, our ITEN collaborations will seek out innovative science and technology,” Schoenbeck said in a statement. “As research projects progress, we will work with the given institution to move them into the clinical phase using therapeutically aligned research units or through CTI.”
Pharmaceutical company Pfizer discontinues research into treating patients with Alzheimer's disease and Parkinson's disease.