Biotech Values

[DewDiligence]

Re: Drug-development success rate

I think the shift to oncology contributed to the decline of overall success rate. The percentage of drug candidates in oncology field has increased dramatically in recent years; due to low success rate in oncology, it dragged down the overall success rate.

That’s an astute observation and is undoubtedly one reason for the low success rate in the BIO study. However, all but one year of the period covered by the BIO database was post-Vioxx, so I think it’s reasonable to infer that fallout from the Vioxx mishap also played some role in the low success rate.