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Hospitals and universities repurposing drugs at lower cost
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- Universities and hospitals are conducting late-stage drug repurposing trials at up to 90% lower cost than pharmaceutical industry trials by operating outside the patent system.
- The three main barriers to drug innovation—expertise, risk, and capital—are significantly reduced when repurposing existing generic drugs that are already well-studied and manufactured.
- Clinicians and scientists are motivated by patient outcomes and career advancement through publications rather than patent-driven financial incentives.
- Drug companies lose interest in repurposing once drugs become generic due to market competition, creating an opportunity for non-profit research institutions to step in.
- Governments worldwide are beginning formal programs to recognize and support this parallel research system, ensuring patient access to affordable repurposed treatments.
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Happy to help. The laws you refer to exist to juice pharma industry profits. Same reason it has been so hard to change the law to allow Medicare to negotiate drug prices. The price gouging is by design for line go up. Changing the law will take time (election cycles). If you cannot leave the US for a developed country that won't squeeze to extract from you while you're trying to meet your healthcare needs, importing your drugs that can be imported without US approval is your only path in the sh…Read on HN ↗
Specialists keep up with the latest research in their domains and talk with other specialists in their field. They usually know about these things before their patients discover them spontaneously. You can read a lot of published papers on PubMed by searching for a condition or drug. You should be aware that there are a lot of papers published that say disease A can be treated with drug or supplement B that fail to replicate if anyone else tries it. It takes some practice to recognize when a tr…Read on HN ↗
Blame the FDA on that one. The FDA's policy for the last couple of decades is that mixtures of mirror images will not get FDA approval unless there is a strong rationale for it. Racemic mixture of ketamine was approved decades ago. If you want a new indication for ketamine, you will need to get approval for a single mirror image, as the FDA won't approve the old drug. They did this because there are numerous examples of racemic mixture drugs having increased side effects from the less active…Read on HN ↗
Doctors aren't yoloing it. What's happening is further research on the medicines are being done which show medicinal benefits for off label use. In many cases, it's researchers seeing a drug has a known side effect and saying "Hmm, I wonder if that side effect can counter this symptom". What's lacking is the final FDA approval for the drugs being used for these off label treatments. That's because these drugs have to go through all the same tests that are required to get FDA approval in the…Read on HN ↗