ABSTRACT
Pharmaceuticals are a high-risk but also potentially high-gain industry. During the lengthy R&D process there are many hurdles to surmount, and very few compounds at the start pass the finishing post. Two reports based on big project databases tend to quite an extent to agree with each other as far as attrition is concerned. Pharma projects Citeline database was probably the largest available at the time. This compared success rates for the 10 years to 2001 with those for the 20 years from 1982 to 2001. The Pharmaprojects Citeline report suggested some limited increase in Phase I attrition rates in the 1990s. The Pammoli et al. survey did not find any worsening at this phase. The Pharmaprojects Citeline data indicated that only rather limited deterioration occurred in the 1990s. Deterioration of attrition rates at the regulatory phase was modest during the 1990-2004 periods but rose sharply thereafter.
