A New Source for Drugs: Combinations of Old Drugs

By combining old drugs in novel ways, upstart pharmaceutical companies may have found an efficient, less-expensive alternative to the traditional drug pipeline.

The approach makes a virtue out of necessity: developing new drugs from scratch costs hundreds of millions of dollars, and in recent years has slowed to a virtual crawl.

Information technology also plays a key role for CombinatoRx (which is pronounced com-bin-a-TOR-ics, as in the mathematics field that deals with combinations). The company relies on the latest robotic drug-screening technology and software to test several thousand pairs of medicines a day. [...]

Eight of the company’s randomly arranged marriages, including drugs for cancer, arthritis and diabetes, have moved into clinical trials — an unusually high number for a company that is only seven years old. Other companies are taking more calculated approaches. Orexigen, in creating its obesity drug Contrave, took a treatment used for drug and alcohol addiction and combined it with an antidepressant sometimes used to help people quit smoking.

The resulting combinations are often effective against diseases which the original drugs did not treat. The old drugs are also often unprotected by patents, making them cheaper to manufacture, and because they've already been tested for toxicity are able to quickly enter clinical trials.

However, there's also a danger of companies combining drugs that don't provide new therapeutic benefits, but allow the companies to extend patent protections -- a loophole the FDA will have to close.

Related Wired coverage here.

Old Drugs In, New Ones Out [New York Times]