Tracking the Pharmaceutical Pipeline: Clinical Trials and Global Disease Burden

Aggregate data about pharmaceutical research and development (R&D) tend to examine Phase III trials. Hence, there are few published data about investigational drugs in earlier phases of clinical development that might fail. It is also unclear how well R&D corresponds to disease burden. We track the pharmaceutical pipeline using data from industry publications that provide otherwise unreported information about industry-sponsored clinical trials. The sample includes 2,477 unique drug entities in 4,182 clinical trials. The majority of drugs targeted neoplasms (26.20%), neurological diseases/diseases of the sense organs (13.48%), infectious and parasitic diseases (10.5%), and endocrine, metabolic, nutrition, and immunity disorders (9.45%). Less than 6% of drugs targeted diseases of the circulatory system, which represent the most prevalent causes of global mortality. Detailing the pharmaceutical pipeline, our findings suggest that pharmaceutical development does not adequately address global disease burden. Future research on the under-reported details of Phase I and II clinical trials is needed to understand how the industry operates and how its resource-allocation matches global health concerns.