Breathless opportunities

Treatment of asthma has remained essentially unchanged for years and focuses on alleviating symptoms rather than disease modification. In large part, the state of the art reflects inertia on the part of the dominant big pharma players, who are focused on wringing out profits from respiratory drug franchises that topped $15 billion in total sales in 2004. But advances also have been slowed by a lack of understanding of the causes of the disease and the fact that so many molecules appear to play a role in it.

Thus, the field today is where cancer was about a decade ago. ...