Drug makers adding X-rays, MRIs to arsenal
Imaging may help predict pharmaceuticals' effects
By Ross Kerber, Globe Staff | January 3, 2005
Researchers at Millennium Pharmaceuticals Inc. hope to produce better drugs with medical-imaging equipment usually used to examine patients.
Today the Cambridge company plans to describe the first scientific paper produced from its roughly $3 million investment in medical-imaging technology, such as X-ray devices and magnetic resonance imaging equipment.
Traditionally, such equipment is used in hospitals to diagnose patients' diseases and disorders. But in recent years, pharmaceutical firms like Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. and biotechnology companies have begun using such systems, too, in hopes of finding ways to spot the effects of experimental drugs on animal tissues early in the research process, before human trials begin.
''We're using these tools to gain more confidence in how these things will behave downstream," said Sudeep Chandra, Millennium's director of imaging sciences.
Figures on spending are scarce, but equipment vendors and medical specialists say they have noticed the surge in interest from biotechnology companies.
One is Umar Mahmood, director of small-animal imaging at Massachusetts General Hospital, who has collaborated with Millennium and given a talk at Biogen Idec Inc. in Cambridge on the subject.
He said imaging is starting to supplement the technologies that had been seen as biotech's most promising analysis tools.
''Until recently, the biotechs were concentrating on gene chips and other methods, but now they have drug candidates that are farther along, and they have mice they can examine with the imaging technologies," Mahmood said.
Another consequence is that fewer animals are needed for the research.
Promoting imaging is a key goal of Millennium and its chief executive, Mark J. Levin. The company is in the midst of a transition as it tries to bring new drugs to market and gain clearances to sell its already approved cancer drug, Velcade, for new uses.
The company lost $483 million in 2003 on sales of $433 million, and laid off 600 people that year. It hopes to reach profitability by 2006.
But numerous executives have left. Most recently, on Dec. 20, Millennium said executive vice president Kenneth Bate will leave, along with three of its 11 board members.
A spokeswoman said the company plans to discuss its financial outlook at an investor conference in San Francisco on Jan. 10. Investors will be keen to hear it, since the company's stock is trading around $12 a share, down from a high of $19.63 this year.
Millennium's work on imaging comes even as it has cut other research spending. Research and development costs were $99 million for the third quarter ended Sept. 30, down from $120 million during the same period a year earlier.
The first concrete result from the imaging effort is a peer-reviewed paper scheduled to appear in the current issue of Molecular Imaging, a journal published by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the company said. The paper's authors, including Chandra, the imaging center's director, describe a method to quantify the destructive progression of arthritis in rats.
The paper describes how Millennium used a technique called ''micro-computed tomographic imaging," which essentially yields a three-dimensioned X-ray image of tissue. In a group of 10 rats, five were induced to develop arthritis, and then the hind paws of all were examined with the equipment to compare characteristics such as ''bone roughness" and ''bone volume," measurements of the disease.
Arthritis and other diseases such as multiple sclerosis are conditions that Millennium hopes to treat with compounds under development. Two are in human clinical trials, and the paper's research doesn't bear directly on them.
In theory, the imaging work will lead to more effective human trials for compounds still being developed, or perhaps even the understanding of the effects of a drug on an particular person.
''Ultimately, imaging models may contribute to the goal of providing a more personalized standard of clinical care based on the disease presentation of the individual patient," the paper's authors write.
Ross Kerber can be reached at kerber@globe.com.
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