The race to cure cancer is without a doubt in full force. A new analysis of R&D trends concluded that oncology is the most active therapeutic area for late-stage research and development among the top 25 biopharmaceutical companies as a whole.
Cancer drug candidates account for nearly one-third of those companies’ Phase 2 programs and nearly one-fourth of their Phase 3 drugs, according to the report done by Decision Resources.
Eli Lilly, Novartis, Roche, AstraZeneca, Merck, Gilead, Pfizer, GlaxoSmithKline, Bristol-Myers Squibb and Boehringer Ingelhiem all have oncology drugs in Phase 3 development, although GSK, Eli Lilly and Gilead have experienced recent setbacks with some of their candidates.
Decision Resources also sees a lot of activity in developing treatments aimed at taming the obesity and diabetes epidemic, fighting infections and slowing or stopping the progression of central nervous system diseases.
Among the top 25 biopharmas, the research firm pegs Novartis as the company with the richest Phase 3 pipeline, predicting it will overthrow Pfizer as the top company by 2015. Novartis has recently announced promising data from late-stage trials of specialty dermatology drugs and has several oncology drugs in late-stage development, including a promising breast cancer drug set to begin a Phase 3 study next month.
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