R&D
patients most likely to respond to a drug, compounds and biological therapeutics pharma industry has picked up the
rather than developing a medicine targeting developed with NIH funding, and establish innovation slack with increased spending on
a broad range of patients with different licensing deals with big pharma. This gave R&D. In 2007, global spending on drug R&D
disease etiologies. Most drugs only work in the industry affordable access to early-stage was $58.8 billion, according to Burrill &
an estimated 40-60% of the patients therapeutics demonstrating promise. The Company. In 2003, PricewaterhouseCoopers
prescribed them. Scientists are now looking potential for exclusivity through patents and valued it at $48 billion compared with just
closely at the molecular basis of diseases licensing agreements provided a huge $17 billion in 1997.
and designing therapies targeting specific incentive for innovation. Since then, biotech So the money is available, and there is no
points in the pathological process with the companies have begun raising their shortage of material to boost pipelines.
aim of improving response rates, but also to expectations of deals significantly, and have What has happened as a result? According
design drugs that impede disease progress, enjoyed the chance to channel their profits to Pharmaprojects, since 1980, there have
rather than just ameliorate their symptoms. from increasingly lucrative licensing deals been at least 1,685 protein targets studied
While the identification of novel targets back into their own in-house development, by various companies in R&D pipeline
helps reveal more about disease adding further competitive pressure on projects; however, launched drugs since that
mechanisms, it is also crucial to the pharma pipelines. time only target 325 of these. Currently,
adaptation of the drug development model. Between 2000 and 2005 the cost of active pipeline projects target 1,073 human
In 2003, the completion of the Human acquiring an early-stage drug candidate proteins, with projects targeting over 540
Genome Project identified approximately from a biotech firm increased eight-fold. At proteins dropped along the way, and of
20,000–25,000 protein-coding genes. Off the same time, pharma companies have these 332 were studied seriously only once
the back of this, many small biotech shown a healthy appetite for outright (not just high-throughput screening)! As
companies were born and they began biotech acquisitions, but even these M&A more successful drugs targeting particular
evaluating the therapeutic viability of the deals have become more difficult as proteins prevail in clinical trials, the less
targets with the aim of producing valuations for the most popular biotech adept projects are selected against and,
marketable novel biological therapies. firms have shot up. In Darwinian terms, by consequently, so too are the targets.
It was legislation that was introduced fitting so neatly into an ecological niche, the The impetus for pushing drug candidates
before the completion of the Human biotech industry is thriving and may well through development at such a rate has
Genome Project that proved a major boost become a dominant “species”. Now, more evidently led to a substantial increase in the
to the pharma industry. Patent life was than ever, the number of therapeutics number of drugs in Phase I and II clinical
extended and academia, small biotechs and targeting novel or previously unproven trials. However, this rise has not been
the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) human proteins has become a key method reflected at Phase III (see Figure 1) which,
itself were allowed to patent novel targets, for measuring innovation. In turn, the of course, has an impact on the number of
Figure 1: Drugs in clinical trials by phase of development
2,000
1995
1996
1997
1998
1999
1,500
2000
2001
2002
2003
2004
2005
2006
1,000 2007
2008
Number of drugs
500
0
Phase I Phase II Phase III
Source: Pharmaprojects
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