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Drivers and Barriers to Drug Discovery: Insights from a Cross-sectional Survey

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Abstract

Purpose

Motivated by stagnant new drug approval rates, this study explores the drivers and barriers to drug discovery to extract policy-relevant advice.

Methods

As part of a doctoral dissertation, an online survey was administered to drug discovery experts between July and November 2017. Respondents came from patents, startup managers/founders, conference speakers, consultants, and LinkedIn profiles, contingent on finding respondent emails from a web search. Respondents ranked drivers and barriers to drug discovery and judged R&D and drug approval trends.

Results

Pooling responses based on frequency of mentions, indicate that respondents deem “skilled R&D scientists”, “R&D investments”, and “good R&D management” as the top three drivers of drug discovery. The “depth” of specialized knowledge is mentioned more than the “diversity” of knowledge available to the discovery team. Likewise, “complex clinical trials”, “companies pursuing the same drug targets”, and “designing drug substances with a single or narrow therapeutic benefits” are top ranked barriers to drug discovery. The majority view is that R&D spending has been stagnant for the past decade. New drug approval trend is judged to be improving in the past 5 years. Ninety percent of respondents believe their responses are generalizable to other therapeutic areas, indicating instrument’s validity in capturing general drug discovery issues.

Conclusions

There are traces of hard and soft institutional problems, firm capability development failures, networking failures, and institutional rigidities (i.e., lock-in failures) in the drug discovery innovation system.

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Notes

  1. Obviously, time and resources would not permit exhausting all LinkedIn potential contacts. About 719 profiles into the author’s 3rd degree network connections were included in the search for contact information.

  2. The “drug approval trend” portion of question 4 received 59 responses including one from the phone interview.

  3. It is beyond the scope of this paper to dig into the literature on this ground.

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Acknowledgements

This paper is based on one chapter of my doctoral dissertation in public policy. I would like to thank my dissertation committee chair Prof. David M. Hart, and committee members Prof. Siona Listokin and Prof Naoru Koizumi. Dr. Ruben Jacobo-Rubio, serving as external reader, was also forthcoming with his comments on the dissertation research. All omissions and errors are mine.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Schar School of Policy and Government, George Mason University, Arlington, VA, USA

    Alfred Sarkissian

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  1. Alfred Sarkissian
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Correspondence to Alfred Sarkissian.

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Examines the drivers and barriers to drug discovery based on an online survey of experts.

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Sarkissian, A. Drivers and Barriers to Drug Discovery: Insights from a Cross-sectional Survey. J Pharm Innov 14, 35–49 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12247-018-9331-3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12247-018-9331-3

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