Pharma ‘is getting better at drug R&D’

pharmafile | September 23, 2015 | News story | Research and Development R&D, drug development, market access, productivity 

An investigation into pharma R&D data shows that drugmakers are becoming more successful at identifying the right candidates for drug development and getting them to market.

The research, by a financial brokerage firm, indicates that from 2010 to 2014, one out of 13 drugs in Phase I development stages came to market. This compares to the previous four-year period, where one in 19 Phase I drug candidates made it to market, according to biopharma data analytics firm KMR Group’s R&D data.

The data is from fourteen large pharma firms including Novartis, Pfizer, Sanofi, Bristol-Myers Squibb and Eli Lilly, who submit blinded R&D information to KMR for benchmarking purposes.

The report looked at their success rates in five categories of drug development: pre-clinical, Phase I, Phase II, Phase III and registration.  Some 5% of preclinical drugs made it to market over the last four years, up from 3.3% from 2007 to 2011.

Drugs were also more successful in advancing through late-stage clinical trial phases in recent years. The report found that 29% of drugs moved from Phase II to Phase III trials from 2010 to 2014, compared to only 22% of drugs making it to late-stage trials from 2007 to 2011. Sixty-nine percent of drugs advanced to registration from Phase III from 2010 to 2014, compared to 62% from 2007 to 2011.

The data also shows that certain drugs had better chances of reaching the market than others. Eighteen small-molecule drugs in Phase I trials produced one marketed product from 2010 to 2014. Over that same four-year period, seven large-molecule biologics yielded one marketed treatment. The production of small-molecule drugs has improved slightly, whilst production for biologic drugs has remained constant since 2007.

However the drug-development cycle continues to gradually increase. Currently, developing a drug takes 10 years on average – 40% longer than 15 years ago.

Yasmita Kumar

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