Making the best use of scarce resources makes sense in all areas of life – none more so than in the vastly expensive world of pharmaceutical development. A trial at University College London and the University of Edinburgh is hoping to apply the ethos of reusing existing resources to find new treatments for Multiple Sclerosis.
Although treatments exist for the early stages of MS, there are none for the secondary, progressive phase. The trial will be investigating the use of three common generic drugs. For each drug, there is a body of evidence of protection from nerve damage, despite their very different primary indications.
The trial will look at heart drug amiloride, anti-depressent fluoxetine, and motor neurone drug riluzole. The MS-Smart trial will look at the effects of these drugs in over 400 participants – the first time they have been tested in this way on such a number of subjects.
Apart from finding new drugs to treat a previously untreatable condition, the benefits are clear. All three drugs have a wealth of pharmacovigilance data from their use as branded and generic drugs and of course, there is a massive price advantage over brand new molecules.
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You can read more about MS-smart, [here]
