Word: marketization
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Other substances in the works may be further from the market, but they are in some ways even more exciting. Several of them take aim at a growth-signaling protein made by a gene called RAS (for rat sarcoma, the cancer in which it was first discovered). In about 30% of cancers, the RAS protein is stuck in an "on" position, mindlessly ordering the cell to divide again and again. It plays a role in 90% of pancreatic cancers, 50% of colon cancers and 25% of lung cancers. Dr. Edward Scolnick discovered the RAS gene in rats while working...
Within a year or two, EntreMed and its partner in the project, Bristol-Myers-Squibb, will probably figure out how to make angiostatin in quantity. At that point the companies will have to apply to the FDA for permission to market them. But before the agency gives its blessing, the companies have to show that the medications work in humans, and that they don't have terrible side effects. Normally, that's a five- or six-stage process that can last 10 years or more...
Each stage takes money--to pay for the drugs, to pay the salaries of researchers and support staff--and while more money might speed things along, drug companies and universities don't always know in advance which medications will reach the market and therefore which ones to throw more money...
...episode is typical of how individuals can get burned when they rush into a stock on a hunch, rumor, hope or partial information. With EntreMed, many placed buy orders for last Monday morning "at the market," with no inkling that the market price had swelled sevenfold without a posted trade. The pros knew. They saw the backlog of buy orders that had built up over the weekend...
...Those claims make terrific investment pitches, and on the heels of a successful new drug launch--Pfizer's impotence pill, Viagra, in this case--investors can get, uh, excited. The reality, though, is that maybe 10% of today's biotech companies will ever bring a blockbuster drug to the market. Those that do will enrich shareholders. But casual investors face long odds trying to be in the right stocks...