The Valley of Death in anticancer drug development: a reassessment

How can attrition rates be reduced in cancer drug discovery?

“…However, ethical concerns about the complete lack of benefit and the repeated tumour biopsies involved are not resolved. Proving target inhibition with a single dose of a single drug might not be a good model to mimic the clinical setting, when sustained inhibition is required to maintain benefit from the agents or they have to be given in combination schedules to prevent the development of resistance [12,38,39].…”

“…Numerous solutions have been proposed to tackle the issue of attrition in anticancer drug development by many authors [5][6][7][8][9][10][11], which has even been defined by some as 'The Valley of Death in anticancer drug development' [12]. Reported factors are innumerable and include scientific and financial or non-scientific reasons.…”

Anticipating Market Introduction of Nanotechnology-Enabled Drug Delivery Systems

“…For an in-depth discussion of dynamics in the drug delivery sector, nanomedicine and pharmaceutical developments more generally, see also [1,[33][34][35].…”

Overview of Research and Development for Anticancer Drugs

“…Although in the past decade, there is an explosion in our understanding of cancer biology with many new potential disease targets, the ability to translate these advances into therapies is poor, with a failure rate approaching 90%. As declining of expenditure on research and development by pharmaceutical companies while rising of the cost of bringing a new molecular entity to market, the so-called "Valley of Death" in anticancer drug de-velopment becomes a highly complex problem [3]. In this mini review, the curiosity-driven research coupled with rigorous preclinical and clinical drug discovery practices used in industry is outlined and opinion of how to increase the accuracy and efficacy of anticancer drug discovery is suggested.…”