Development trends for new cancer therapeutics and vaccines

Global commercial development of cancer treatments has dramatically increased over the past 15 years. To assess trends in the process, we analyzed data for 1111 candidates that entered clinical study during 1990–2006. Our results show that although the average number of therapeutic candidates entering clinical study per year more than doubled, the US approval success rate was low (8%) during the period. The therapeutics took seven years on average to go through the clinical and US approval phases, but cancer vaccines have yet to gain any US approvals. These results indicate that improvement in the efficiency of the development process for innovative cancer treatments is needed.