Pharma Blog Watch

Exaggerated Success? (Xcovery Blog)
In his blog, Tim Gallagher discusses an article about Genentech, in which it is revealed that the company conducted 15 clinical trials in a row without any of them yielding negative results, quite a feat in an industry where experimental drugs generally fail more often than they succeed.

Genentech "went 15 for 15 in it's critical trials (Avastin, etc.), which the company pegs the odds of success at 1 in 300,000,000," he writes. "Not to diminish anything that [Genentech] has accomplished, but I think this stat would only be correct if these 15 compounds were developed in one insanely profitable month of serial chemical synthesis. The 15/15, 1:300 million odds are built on a probability of one success at 1 in 9,155 (.0109 percent), which I think is Genentech's parallel for the old saw of '1 in 10,000 compounds ever receive FDA approvals.'"