Professor Talbot with Les, Claire and the Halpin Scholars
Empowering patients to gain earlier access to medicine: campaign launched by alumnus
A campaign to speed up the availability of new drugs and treatments for people with rare or life-threatening conditions has been launched by Dr Les Halpin (Mathematical Statistics and Operational Research 1979, Hon LLD 2011).
Les was diagnosed with motor neurone disease (MND) in 2011 and has since been dedicated to finding ways of accelerating approval and licensing of drugs for people who suffer from life-threatening conditions.
After receiving his diagnosis, Les set about discovering the treatments and therapies available and what research was taking place.
“I was hugely shocked in discovering, on talking to my doctors, there was still only one drug that has been licensed for MND – and that had been licensed over 20 years before,” he said.
“That prompted me to look more closely at the whole situation about drug innovation and therapy innovation for MND but also for illnesses in general, and led me to found the campaign for Empower: Access to Medicine.”
The campaign aims to reduce the long and expensive testing and development process of new drugs. It also wants to encourage pharmaceutical companies to invest in treatments for diseases that impact small numbers of the population, through activities such as reviewing legislation for drugs so they can have multiple uses.
Les said he understands the need for current system is in place to protect the wider public against ‘bad’ drugs which might have dreadful side-effects, but that the risk-ratio is very different for a minority of people.
“What we are talking about here are patient groups with very small numbers and drugs that would not be exposed to the population at large,” he said. “The benefits for those patients is enormous. The risk - to be absolutely frank - is minimal, given that these people have been unfortunately given limited life-expectancy because of their conditions.”
Les is also Chairman of Helping Neurosciences, which aims to accelerate the development of motor neurone therapeutics. He and his wife Claire (Biology 1979) have donated over £1 million to the University, including funding the Halpin PhD Scholarship programme, which supports research into rice blast disease, which can have a devastating impact on crops.
To get involved with the campaign visit www.accesstomedicine.co.uk where you can subscribe to a regular newsletter and watch a powerful film with Les and some high-profile campaign supporters explaining this complex issue in more detail. Also receive updates through Twitter @empoweratm.
Date: 21 November 2012
