Pharma Blog Watch

Failed Drugs (In the Pipeline)
In his blog, Derek Lowe discusses news that after GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) released an update on its research pipeline, "analysts noticed that eleven drugs had disappeared from clinical trials since the last listing."

"None of the drugs were, individually, expected to be huge parts of GSK's future by themselves — but losing nearly a dozen compounds from the clinic has to hurt," he writes. "I almost wish that more were made of these failures. It would be painful for the companies involved, but it would give people a better idea of how painful drug discovery can be. … There should be some way to get the point across that most of our drug candidates never make it, taking all their development money down with them."