Editorials

Over the past weeks, I have discussed several barriers that make it difficult to involve patients in developing new medicines as much as everyone involved would like. My theory is that we need to do a better job educating patients.  I’d love to hear your thoughts on this topic. Some of these barriers may seem obvious and manageable…

Choices. Have you ever found yourself in an unfamiliar city trying to get from point A to point B as quickly as possible?  Taxi? Bus? Subway? Traffic scares you, so the subway it is. You stare at the nicely designed kaleidoscope of a map and try to make sense of which trains are going where, when,…

As the winter approaches here in New England, the picture above caught my eye. What do you see? Is the sun setting… or rising? What’s up? What’s down? Where was the picture taken? When? How can you be sure? Did my opening line influence you? Introduction There seems to be a consensus from all the stakeholders that increased patient…

The journey to a new medicine is a challenging, uphill, and winding road. Whenever a patient gets involved in medicines development, they are likely to face a roller coaster of hopefulness and despair like they have never experienced. Since only about 5% of the compounds and proteins put into advanced testing a make it through to market…

“A champion named Goliath…came out from the Philistine camp. He was over nine feet tall. He had a bronze helmet on his head and wore a coat of scale armor of bronze weighing [125 pounds]; on his legs he wore bronze greaves, and a bronze javelin was slung on his back. His spear shaft was like a…

Let’s do a quick word association exercise. What is the first word that comes to mind when you read each of the terms below? Trial Investigator Subject Attrition Arms Targets Chances are your responses were somehow affected by your level of familiarity with medicines development. Introduction Patients are the most important stakeholders in the development of…

Introduction Patients are the most important stakeholders in the development of new therapies. Thus, one might conclude that patients must be involved in the process of developing these therapies. While there are some excellent examples of patient involvement improving both the execution and the focus of clinical trials, it is far from the norm.[1] Why? It is only over…