Speeding Up Drug Approvals Could Backfire

To patients grappling with incurable diseases, new therapies can't come quickly enough. A bill that hopes to address this need sailed through the House in the summer with the goal of getting more "21st Century Cures" through the drug approval pipeline. But a pair of new studies found that speeding up this process could put drugs that are ineffective or harmful on the market.

At least for complex neurological diseases, such as Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and depression, recent history suggests that approving drugs faster based on biomarkers — early signs that a drug could be working — might make drugs that ultimately don't work available to patients, two teams of researchers found.