August-September 2017
Lessons Learned from Two Decades of Anticancer Drugs
Tremendous efforts have been made to understand cancer biology for advancing anticancer drug development. Despite two decades of intensive research efforts, only a little over 200 anticancer drugs have been made available. The low throughput is in large part due to anticancer drug development still suffering high attrition during the later phases of clinical development.
NCTR scientists in collaboration with scientists from University of Birmingham in the UK and University of Arkansas at Little Rock summarized both successful and failed experiences in anticancer development during the past 20 years. The work helped identify why the current paradigm may be suboptimal. Furthermore, they offer potential strategies for improvement of anticancer drug development. This publication is now available online at Trends in Pharmacological Sciences.
For more information, please contact Zhichao Liu, Ph.D., Division of Bioinformatics and Biostatistics, FDA/NCTR or Weida Tong, Ph.D., Director, Division of Bioinformatics and Biostatistics, FDA/NCTR.