Cancer, Cancer Treatment

A new era of intelligent cancer drug development has spurred a leap in the proportion of drugs reaching patients, according to a study by Cancer Research UK scientists published in Nature Reviews Drug Discovery.

Scientists obtained data on 974 cancer drugs in clinical development, and calculated that there was a probability that 18 per cent of those entering the clinic would make it to market. Previously it was estimated that in some studies only five per cent of cancer drugs in the pipeline become standard treatments for the disease.