Therapy Analysis - Pharma R&D Annual Review
Top therapies - further focus on cancer
points of interest to note from the table are a significant rise in antiviral drug development, and the continued advancement of fixed-dose combinations...Moving to looking at the pipeline by therapy, for yet another year, we see cancer taking an ever-larger slice of the R&D pie. In fact, 28% of all drugs in development have an anticancer therapeutic activity, only a slight increase from last year, but still an extraordinary concentration of resources. The therapeutic category for general anticancers remains the largest of the 218 individual therapies, as seen in Table 3, and it posts a 10.3% growth from the 2008 figure. The category for immunological cancer therapies remains in 2nd place, and also shows a small increase.
Other points of interest to note from the table are a significant rise in antiviral drug development, and the continued advancement of fixed-dose combinations as a strategy to both improve patient compliance and to manage product lifecycles.
In the 17 broader therapeutic areas, 19.8% of the pipeline have a Neurological activity, making this the 2nd biggest area. Anti-infectives come third, with 16.8%, up marginally from 2008's 16.1% share. This year, 23.7% of drugs are categorized under one of the biotechnology therapeutic categories, up from 23.2% last year and continuing the trend of gradual increases in biotech year-on-year.
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