BOSTON – July 22, 2009 – Large pharmaceutical firms, under pressure to bring new medicines to market faster, have been getting more drug candidates into development in recent years and have become more aggressive in terminating unpromising candidates, according to a study recently completed by the Tufts Center for the Study of Drug Development.

One in six self-originated compounds that entered clinical testing at large pharmaceutical companies from1993 to 2004 was expected to eventually attain marketing approval, the study found.

“Increasing the pace of new drugs entering development and terminating candidates that are unlikely to succeed is the right combination of trends that will help the industry counter the expected decline in revenues due to scheduled patent expirations,” said Tufts CSDD Director of Economic Analysis and study author Joseph A. DiMasi.

According to the study, the share of new self-originated drugs that were terminated during Phase I and Phase II clinical testing increased from 1993-98 to 1999-04.

The study also found that the in-licensing of products into the clinical pipelines of the top 50 firms, a practice that gained much industry attention in recent years, reached a high point at the end of the 1990s. After peaking at 28% for drugs that first entered clinical testing in the 1999-01 period, licensed products as a share of the total development portfolios of big pharma dropped to just under 16% for 2005-07.

“The decline in the share of drugs that were licensed-in at large pharmaceutical firms likely reflects both a reinvigoration of discovery efforts and a recent shift in licensing strategies that focuses more on the smaller number of available late-stage compounds to help offset weak short-term growth prospects“, DiMasi said.

The study, reported in the July/August Tufts CSDD Impact Report, released today, also found that:

*  For the top 50 global firms, the annual rate at which drugs enter clinical testing increased 31% from 1999-01 to 2002-07.

*  Nearly three-quarters of the drugs in the portfolios of the top pharmaceutical firms that reached clinical testing from 1993-07 originated in and were developed by the firms.

*  While clinical success rates for drugs varied widely by therapeutic class, of six specific broad therapeutic categories analyzed, oncologic/immunologic and central nervous system (CNS) had the greatest number of drug candidates entering clinical testing over the 1993-07 period.

About the Tufts Center for the Study of Drug Development

The Tufts Center for the Study of Drug Development (http://csdd.tufts.edu) at Tufts University provides strategic information to help drug developers, regulators, and policy makers improve the quality and efficiency of pharmaceutical development, review, and utilization. Tufts CSDD, based in Boston, conducts a wide range of in-depth analyses on pharmaceutical issues and hosts symposia, workshops, and public forums, and publishes the Tufts CSDD Impact Report, a bi-monthly newsletter providing analysis and insight into critical drug development issues.

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