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A drug pipeline is the set of drug candidates that an individual
pharmaceutical company The pharmaceutical industry is a Medicine, medical industry that discovers, develops, produces, and markets pharmaceutical goods such as medications and medical devices. Medications are then administered to (or Self-medicate, self-administered b ...
or the entire
pharmaceutical industry The pharmaceutical industry is a medical industry that discovers, develops, produces, and markets pharmaceutical goods such as medications and medical devices. Medications are then administered to (or self-administered by) patients for curing ...
collectively has under
discovery Discovery may refer to: * Discovery (observation), observing or finding something unknown * Discovery (fiction), a character's learning something unknown * Discovery (law), a process in courts of law relating to evidence Discovery, The Discovery ...
or
development Development or developing may refer to: Arts *Development (music), the process by which thematic material is reshaped * Photographic development *Filmmaking, development phase, including finance and budgeting * Development hell, when a proje ...
at any given point in time. The drug pipeline is also sometimes restricted to a particular
drug class A drug is any chemical substance other than a nutrient or an essential dietary ingredient, which, when administered to a living organism, produces a biological effect. Consumption of drugs can be via inhalation, injection, smoking, ingestio ...
or extended to mean the process of discovering drugs (the research and development pipeline). The R&D pipeline involves various phases that can broadly be grouped in 4 stages: discovery, pre-clinical,
clinical trials Clinical trials are prospective biomedical or behavioral research studies on human subject research, human participants designed to answer specific questions about biomedical or behavioral interventions, including new treatments (such as novel v ...
and marketing (or post-approval).
Pharmaceutical companies The pharmaceutical industry is a Medicine, medical industry that discovers, develops, produces, and markets pharmaceutical goods such as medications and medical devices. Medications are then administered to (or Self-medicate, self-administered b ...
usually have a number of compounds in their pipelines at any given time. The drug pipeline is an important indicator of the value and future prospects of a
company A company, abbreviated as co., is a Legal personality, legal entity representing an association of legal people, whether Natural person, natural, Juridical person, juridical or a mixture of both, with a specific objective. Company members ...
. Usually the more compounds in the pipeline, and the more advanced stage that these are in the better. Other factors that are taken into account when assessing the value of a pipeline include the size of the target market of each
drug A drug is any chemical substance other than a nutrient or an essential dietary ingredient, which, when administered to a living organism, produces a biological effect. Consumption of drugs can be via insufflation (medicine), inhalation, drug i ...
, the
market share Market share is the percentage of the total revenue or sales in a Market (economics), market that a company's business makes up. For example, if there are 50,000 units sold per year in a given industry, a company whose sales were 5,000 of those ...
that the drug is expected to capture and the risk that it will not be approved. Some biotechnology companies, which are at or near the clinical stage and have attracted investors, are often bought by large pharmaceutical companies for high prices. However, these biotech companies may face failures, particularly in producing near-term products. This can lead to the shutdown of the acquired companies, resulting in the loss of accumulated knowledge and expertise. The cost of developing a new drug is astronomical – typically a drug costs many hundreds of millions and can reach 1 billion dollars over 15–17 years. Assessing this risk and filtering out, as early as possible, compounds that may not eventually get approved is essential to the pharmaceutical industry and involves checking the effectiveness of drugs as well as the likelihood of toxic events ( Adverse event prediction).


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External links

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Drug Pipeline Food and Drug Administration