Therapy Analysis - Pharma R&D Annual Review
Pharmacologies - focus on inflammation
Table 4 shows the most popular pharmacological strategies currently being employed in the development of new drugs. As well as giving overall figures, it reports the percentage for each category of drugs which are in the later stages of development, ie, pre-registration, registered or launched, to give an idea of the maturity of each strategy. While there is little movement towards the top end of the table, it is interesting to note that there appears to be an increase for three of the categories involved in the treatment of inflammation, namely cyclooxygenase-1 and -2 inhibitors (for NSAIDs) and lipocortins synthesis agonists for steroidal antiinflammatories. This is despite these categories' relative maturity.
This year, the cumulative number of pharmacological drug development stategies reported has risen to 1,732, indicating that a further 64 new strategies were identified over the course of the last year. This is a slightly larger increase than that seen from 2005 to 2006. The total number of drug protein targets which are or have been investigated during the 27 years in which Pharmaprojects has been tracking pharma R&D has shown an even bigger rise. This figure now stands at 1,558, up more than a hundred on the 2006 value of 1,451, suggesting a particularly innovative year for the industry.
