Something developed in a lab is something we, most likely, will never see - and will never know why the thing didn't reach the 2nd stage (or the 1st).
https://www.cremieux.xyz/p/the-rise-and-impending-fall-of-th...
The patents expired, so nobody can raise the hundreds of millions to do the phase II/III safety trials.
Granted, it's not going to be easy because the original patent has expired so it's going to be very easy for an upstart Indian company to conduct basic clinical trials, use part of the data of the second patent's holder to prove equivalency (they did this test so we don't need to do this test), and then get approved through an accelerated pathway in the FDA. Which is why even well-capitalized players will shy away from what could be a cash cow.
One thing bugs me though - why don't other countries with different research structures pick this up and run with it?
I would think there are pharma teams in China or India, maybe even Russia that could replicate and further develop something like this, given the initial paper and PR.
I mean, the covid vaccinations - people are/were doing their nut about the Euro/US versions, but the Russians had their own, the Chinese had two, and I am aware that the Chinese were handing it out to other countries as part of their aid programs (the effectiveness of those vaccines, however, has been questioned, especially in comparison to the Euro/US ones, but I'm not sure if that's reality or politics, it's so damned hard to tell these days)
Oh yeah, "corporations", "end-stage capitalism", blah blah.
The reality is that 95+% of drug candidates fail the trials. And a lot of them only fail during the Phase-3 where the efficacy is tested. It's likely that large companies tried it in-house and found that it's either too toxic or is ineffective in-vivo.
1. University/startup company finds a promising drug candidate that works in-vitro. They make a press-release, researchers write their theses, and move on.
2. Drug companies pick that up and run small-scale tests. These tests are negative, usually because of unexpected toxicity.
Looking at the molecule in question, it's likely what happened here. It's a covalent inhibitor, meaning that it permanently binds with the protein. It's also allosteric, meaning that it binds to the target enzyme but not at the actual active site. This is a huge red flag for toxicity, because it's likely going to bind to other proteins that can have similar configurations.
3. But the underlying idea is sound, so companies keep working on alternative approaches. They are likely looking for non-covalent compounds now, or for things like "suicide inhibitors".
4. You'll see actual trials in 10-15 years after the initial press-release. Most likely for completely different compounds, targeting the same mechanism.
For the longest time I had been trying to figure out why nobody was taking the research seriously, why there weren't diagnostic kits available that determined which variant people were actually suffering from, and using the appropriate drug regime to manage the specific condition the patient had.
Then, last year I saw a paper being discussed (some 5 - 10 years after the initial paper), and it was building on the Washington research - it appears to me now (keeping in mind that I am a layman and an outsider) that the research /had/ been taken seriously, but it's seen as a signpost on the pathway rather than the destination.
This one is quite tinfoil-hat inspiring, as the research was moved to defense-focused Draper Labs and then immediately disappeared.