Nature Reviews Drug Discovery 11, 17-18 (January 2012) | doi:10.1038/nrd3630
From the analyst's couch: A decade of change
[Extract]
In 2001, R&D groups across the industry were rewarded for putting drug candidates into development or for moving them into the next stage of development; consequently, R&D pipelines grew in the early years of the past decade (Fig. 1); data for Figs 1,2,3,4 are compiled from 14 companies — 6 major, 8 mid and other. However, the outcome was a rise in attrition levels a few years later, such that the chance of successful market launch for a drug entering Phase I trials fell from approximately 10% in 2002 to 5% at last estimate (Fig. 2). The weakest link in the chain was, and still is, in Phase II, where around 50% of failures are typically due to efficacy, 30% are due to strategic reasons and 20% are due to safety concerns3. These stark data — along with continued financial strain — resulted in the dramatic paring back of the pipeline volumes from 2008 onwards. Companies started to focus on fewer candidates that they deemed most scientifically robust, moved away from multiple back-up candidates, reduced the number of therapeutic areas they operated in and questioned the prospects of candidates that seemed unlikely to be best or first in class.
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