From biomarker strategies to biomarker activities and back

The pharmaceutical industry must find ways to improve the unacceptably high attrition rate during drug development. Clearly, pharma has moved away from treat-and-see testing of new drugs in patients, with a strong current focus on generating translational biomarkers early in the research process to enable more predictive evaluation of drug action in clinical trials. Underlying such a translational medicine approach is the intensive search for and use of high-quality biomarkers indicative of successful drug target engagement, pharmacological effects, efficacy or safety. This review outlines our rational question-based drug development strategy in which biomarker data drive decisions on which drug candidates to progress to clinical testing.