There are some priceless moments: a nonplussed police officer pulling the bus over, a grouchy-looking Jack Kerouac unimpressed by the free-spirited youngsters, and a fascinating audio recording of Kesey's first acid trip in 1960, when he was a student guinea pig in a drug research programme (funded by the CIA – one of the great ironies of the counterculture movement).
According to Harry Tracy, whose newsletter NeuroPerspective tracks developments in drug treatments for psychiatric problems as well as neurological conditions such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease, the number of psychopharmacological drugs research programmes in larger drug firms has shrunk by 70% in the past decade.
B.T. Slingsby, a former Eisai executive who now runs the GHIT Fund, says that drugs developed in its research programmes will be licensed without royalties in the poorest countries.
Within the first few months at SB, she saw an opportunity to initiate a series of new research programmes focused on exploitation of RNA as a drug target.
The 2008 2011 Pharma-programme was established with the aim of facilitating drug research.
There are numerous research programmes seeking to understand the possible causes of MS and to develop drug therapies to manage the condition.
Of the 36 new drugs launched in America last year, 17 were orphan drugs.When Flemming Ornskov became Shire's boss, in April 2013, the company's research programmes were too broad, with high administrative costs.
They are now deploying them to discover drugs of their own.At Ranbaxy itself, Pradip Bhatnagar, who heads a unit working on developing proprietary drugs, has some 300 people, including 120 chemists and 120 biologists, working on ten research programmes.
Analysts at Northland Capital Partners said: ValiRx takes a low-risk approach to cancer drug development: by outsourcing much of its drug development work to contract research organisations the company has flexibility in quickly terminating any struggling research programmes.
Then on November 30th he hosted an open day for analysts at the firm's research laboratories in leafy Groton, Connecticut, a short drive from the firm's headquarters in New York.At his instigation, Pfizer's secretive boffins unveiled details of the firm's drugs pipeline, disclosing information for the first time on more than half of its 30 research programmes.
