Nurturing baby steps in drug development
development, rather than relying on breakthroughs, according to a
report from the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry
(ABPI).
Although there are a record number of potential drugs in the combined pipelines of nearly 50 pharma companies operating in the UK, it "must be nurtured" to achieve success. The ABPI's "A-Z of Medicines research" report has revealed that over the last four years, the number of potential drugs in clinical development has nearly doubled from 561 to 950 compounds, with patients offered new hope in nearly 50 disease areas. However, as research and development costs soar - the same report show a 700 per cent increase over the last two decades to £3.31bn (€4.88bn), the productivity of the pharma industry as a whole is declining and the ABPI acknowledges that many of these compounds will not make it through the stringent, 12-year development period, and most that do make it, will not be medical 'breakthroughs'. "Research must be nurtured," said Dr Richard Barker, head of the ABPI. "It would be incorrect and unrealistic to assume that, by some miraculous process, we jump the various stages of development and create the 'perfect' medicine for a disease." "The 'first of kind' medicine is rarely the 'best of kind' that offers patients the best treatment," he added. The majority of the compounds are in early to mid stage clinical development - with 362 in Phase I trials and 349 in Phase II. 240 potential drugs are undergoing late stage, Phase III development, where large numbers of patients are treated with the investigational compound. "One of the key facts about medicines research is that advance is not usually made through sudden leaps in knowledge but through small but vital steps in the advance of our understanding of a condition and how to treat it," said Dr Barker. "If we relied solely on breakthroughs, our overall achievements would be less - each of those 950 compounds in development has the potential to lead to a small but significant improvement to the treatment of disease - and, over time, we shall be able to look back and see how far we have come." Of the diseases being targeted by pharma companies, the one with the largest number of potential new drugs is cancer, with 170 possible drugs being investigated. This is followed by cardiovascular disease drugs (109), mental disorders (62), diseases of the endocrine system (59), respiratory diseases (53) and dementia (20).
