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conferenceseries
.com
Volume 8
Journal of Alzheimers Disease & Parkinsonism
ISSN: 2161-0460
Euro Dementia 2018
May 24-25, 2018
May 24-25, 2018 | Vienna, Austria
11
th
International Conference on
Alzheimers Disease & Dementia
The enigma of Eroom’s law and the Wall Street math stifling Alzheimer’s drug discovery
Max Tokarsky
InvestAcure, USA
A
s the prevalence of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) grows, so does the costs it imposes on the society. Yet, despite a significant
number of drugs showing promise in animal models, progress is being stifled by a breakdown in the return on investment
(ROI) model at the clinical stage of drug discovery. For complex diseases like Alzheimer's, research progress depends on the
trial and error of real-world phase 1 & 2 clinical trials. Due to the high cost of clinical research, this stage of drug discovery
depends on industry-led investment. The average cost of developing a new drug, per billion US dollars spent on R&D, has
doubled roughly every nine years since 1950. That means, adjusted for inflation, it costs 80 times more to develop a new drug
today than it did in 1950. The observation of this trend was coined Eroom’s law by industry analyst Jack Scannell in 2012,
writing in Nature Reviews Drug Discovery. The current ROI from internal R&D in the pharmaceutical industry as a whole is
an average 3.7%. For Alzheimer's, this model has broken down altogether and has led most major pharmaceuticals to downsize
or close their Alzheimer’s research divisions. A structural solution to the current financial model is needed if we are to make
progress to a cure. InvestAcure’s Public Benefit Corporation model offers one such solution, by transitioning investment
leadership from the current venture capital model to micro-investment by those impacted by the disease.
mtokarsky@investacure.comJ Alzheimers Dis Parkinsonism 2018, Volume 8
DOI:10.4172/2161-0460-C3-043