The attrition that dare not speak its name

A while ago, my company conducted some analysis on pIII attrition and on-market performance (some of it summarised here: http://www.pharmafocus.com/cda/focusH/1,2109,22-0-0-DEC_2008-focus_feature_deta

By mikerea on Feb 11, 2009

A while ago, my company conducted some analysis on pIII attrition and on-market performance (some of it summarised here: http://www.pharmafocus.com/cda/focusH/1,2109,22-0-0-DEC_2008-focus_featu... )

Although pIII attrition is reasonably well characterised in pharma, there is an unfortunate paradox that fixing it is frequently just a case of storing up problems for the future. In the classic case of being careful what you ask for, some companies have lowered their technical risk of failure in pIII simply by lowering the hurdles for success...

That is unfortunate, because the knock-on effect will be to increase later-stage attrition - in this case the on-market performance of the product. The figures there have remained shocking for a while now - for every 4 drugs that the industry launches, only one pays back its lifetime costs. Think about that - the industry was already launching 3 drugs that weren't a commercial success for every one that was. Now, there are an increasing number of trials where statistical significance, or the minimum necessary for registration, are being performed.

Forget about the value proposition being studied - that is something that can apparently be bolted on as a 'health economic argument' after the fact.

Now, what was that definition of 'madness'?