Reducing Clinical Trial Failure With New Tools for Drug Target Identification and Prioritization

Finding new drugs and bringing them to market is a very long, research intensive process, taking on average 10 to 12 years¹ and costing between $1.5 and $3 billion USD². Data from the Centers for Medical Research (CMR) shows that less than one out of every ten drugs that enter clinical trials make it to market¹ and over half of all clinical compounds fail because they are not effective against the target.³

Arguably the biggest reason for failure is that the wrong targets are chosen.^4,5 In many cases no clear link is made between the target and disease, or the compounds have the wrong physiochemical properties to be effective. In other cases there is just too much information from too many sources scattered in too many places to be able to get a complete picture of diseases, targets and animal models. Combining the right tools and workflows with the right data will lead to better decisions and more drugs to alleviate suffering.

This webinar will focus on new tools which will allow scientists to:

• Identify targets through genomic analysis
• Prioritize them based on scientific, clinical and business rationale
• Help select the most relevant animal model
• Identify those with the greatest chance of success to market.

Several examples of the application of these tools will be discussed.

References

1. International, C. 2015 CMR INTERNATIONAL PHARMACEUTICAL R&D EXECUTIVE SUMMARY. (2015).
2. DiMasi, J. A., Grabowski, H. G. & Hansen, R. W. Innovation in the pharmaceutical industry: New estimates of R&D costs. J Health Econ 47, 20-33, doi:10.1016/j.jhealeco.2016.01.012 (2016).
3. Harrison, R. K. Phase II and phase III failures: 2013-2015. Nat Rev Drug Discov 15, 817-818, doi:10.1038/nrd.2016.184 (2016).
4. Cook, D. et al. Lessons learned from the fate of AstraZeneca’s drug pipeline: a five-dimensional framework. Nat Rev Drug Discov 13, 419-431, doi:10.1038/nrd4309 (2014).
5. Morgan, P. et al. Can the flow of medicines be improved? Fundamental pharmacokinetic and pharmacological principles toward improving Phase II survival. Drug Discov Today 17, 419-424, doi:10.1016/j.drudis.2011.12.020 (2012).

Speakers

Dr. Richard K. Harrison, Chief Scientific Officer, Clarivate Analytics

Dr. Richard K. Harrison is the Chief Scientific Officer at Clarivate Analytics. He has over 30 years of experience in the life sciences industry. His career has focused on all aspects of pre-clinical drug discovery. During this time he has held positions of increasing responsibility at Aventis, Merck, DuPont and Wyeth Pharmaceuticals where he delivered numerous clinical candidates and worked on several marketed drugs. In addition, he served as a founding scientist in two successful venture funded computational and structure based drug design companies. Dr. Harrison has authored over 40 peer reviewed publications and book chapters in all areas of drug discovery and has presented over 50 invited lectures on these subjects. He earned his Ph.D. in Biophysical Chemistry and Enzymology and currently serves as an adjunct professor at several universities.

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Aleksey Dubovenko, Discovery Sciences Product Manager, Clarivate Analytics

Alexey graduated from the School of Bioengineering and Bioinformatics at Moscow State University. Over the last 9 years he has worked in biological data analysis including the biological interpretation of OMICs data in different therapeutic areas, personalized treatment selection in oncology, mathematical modeling of treatment efficacy, toxicity, pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics on preclinical and clinical phases for top pharmaceutical companies. Alexey became the Discovery Sciences Product Manager at Clarivate Analytics in 2015.

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Matt Wampole, Manager, Solution Scientist Team, Clarivate Analytics

Dr. Matthew Wampole received his PhD in chemistry from Bryn Mawr College. He then worked at Thomas Jefferson University as postdoctoral research fellow to develop tumor specific imaging probes for cancer patients with KRAS mutations. He has since joined Clarivate Analytics and is currently the Manager of the Solution Scientist team. This group works closely with scientists in the discovery, pre-clinical, and translational biomedical research fields seeking to develop new therapies.

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