ABSTRACT
Our aging and soon to be space-faring world needs drugs that can direcdy stimulate bone growth instead o f merely stopping bone loss useful though this may be. As you have seen in these many pages, there are now some potent anabolic drugs. O ne o f PTH s, the venerable h P T H -(l-3 4 ) (Forteo™ ), approved by the U SFD A in October 20 0 1 , is being widely used and others such as O stabolin-C™ are in the middle o f their trials and destined to jo in Forteo™ in the important job o f growing bone. They are very safe peptides when used for a couple o f years which even use other candidate anabolic agents such as FG F-2 and IG F-I to pardy drive bone growth. But at the moment they suffer from having to be injected subcutaneously for a couple o f years to grow new bone before the injections can be stopped and the patient be switched over to an oral antiresorptive to keep their new “P T H bone”. However, the experience from the several trials indicates that autoinjection by osteoporotics is not a significant deterrent, and there is one oral P T H already in phase II trial and inhalable PTH s are being developed by Lilly and Zelos Therapeutics. Close behind the PTH s may be the non-injectable, topically applicable, but so far frustratingly erratic, statins with some bone anabolic and antiresorptive promise from experiments on mice and rats, with very, beneficial cardiovascular actions and with the very important possibility o f being anti-sporadic Alzheimer’s disease in humans. W hat incredible drugs they might turn out to be if they could get their acts together! Then there is the “sleeper”— leptin-which to everyone’s surprise may turn out to be another member o f the exclusive bone builders’ club. But as o f late-2006 it is probably be too late for these contenders. There will be no competition for the new non-injectable, low-or maybe even non-hypercalcemogenic, potendy anabolic PTH s which will be unbeatable when they arrive on the market.
