Therapy Analysis - Pharma R&D Annual Review
Pharmacologies - cancer categories dominate
Table 4 shows the most popular pharmacological strategies currently being employed in the development of new drugs. As well as giving overall figures for each category of drugs it also lists the percentage which are in the later stages of development - pre-registration, registered or launched, to give an idea of the maturity of each strategy. The mean for all categories for this value is 9.4%.
Another part of Pharmaprojects’ data synchronization with TrialTrove has been the latter’s plan to move to use the Pharmaprojects pharmacological classification, this has necessitated the creation of a number of new pharmacological categories – hence the three new entries in this year’s Top 20, which are all newly-created. This means that, aside from the two general immunostimulant and immunosuppressant categories, the rest of the six most popular strategies are all primarily anticancer strategies, with Apoptosis stimulant posting an above average 25.2% rise despite its relative immaturity. Also of note is the 25.5% increase in the Gene expression inhibitor category, which mainly covers RNA interference agents. This is clearly an area to watch, despite the most advanced agent of this type, Opko Health’s bevasiranib sodium, having only begun Phase III trials in July last year, for wet age-related macular degeneration.
This year, the cumulative number of pharmacological drug development strategies reported has risen to 2,028, up from 1,732 this time last year. The increase of 296 is much larger than the previous year’s rise of 64, but as previously noted, a number of new categories have been created as Pharmaprojects and TrialTrove synchronized their respective classifications. Thus this measure cannot be used this year the judge the level of innovation. A more reliable metric is the number of drug protein targets which are or have been investigated during the 28 years which Pharmaprojects has been tracking R&D. This now stands at 1,650, up from 1,558 in 2007 but actually showing a smaller increase than that seen in the previous twelve months. This adds a note of caution at the end of a series of seeming optimistic statistics. Long-term, it is surely only new drugs against innovative disease targets which can be the saviour of the pharmaceutical industry.
