Cancer Drugs Remain the Focus of Developers, but Pandemic Sees Large Spike in Anti-Infectives

A new report analyzing drug research and development (R&D) during the pandemic found that while cancer drugs have remained industry’s top focus, anti-infective drugs saw the biggest increase of all therapies due to the monumental efforts to combat the COVID-19 crisis.

Informa Pharma Intelligence’s 2021 report, which includes data up to Jan. 4, 2021, found that cancer drugs held the top four positions of therapies in the research pipeline in 2020. But as of this year, coronavirus treatments had taken the fifth spot previously held by therapies for ovarian cancer, with 553 drugs in the pipeline when in the recent past there were none.

Anti-infective drugs have seen the largest increase (22.4 percent) as of January 2021 out of all drug groups, the report found, noting that anti-infectives were actually on the decline at the beginning of 2020.

Breast cancer took the top spot with 924 drugs in the R&D pipeline in 2020 while lung cancer came in second with 710 drugs. Colorectal and pancreatic cancer drugs took the third and fourth positions, with 640 colorectal cancer and 563 pancreatic cancer drugs in the 2020 pipeline.

Anticancer and biotech drugs have continued to climb and securely hold their No. 1 and 2 spots as the top therapy areas, with biotech drugs seeing a notable increase. Cancer drugs have seen a 7 percent expansion as of January 2021, but that figure clocks in at just half of the rate seen at the same time in 2020, “suggesting that the inexorable rise of anticancer R&D was perhaps somewhat dented by resources redeployed against the pandemic,” the report said.

Read the full report here: bit.ly/31iMKfU. — James Miessler