Epoch 20: Measuring & Maximizing Clinical Productivity

Cycle Times & Survival

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Hello Avatar! Welcome back for another week of biotech analysis. Today is Sunday, which means this is our Building Biotech newsletter that is focused on discussing biopharma strategy topics. Today we are going to cover Clinical Trial productivity.  For as long as we can remember these metrics have been the focus of R&D leadership teams in pharma and a goldmine of work for management consults who track these metrics and develop plans to improve the numbers alongside pharma C-suites.  We feel IQVIA does the most comprehensive job in tracking these metrics and today we will take you through the latest numbers in terms of cycle times and survival cut by stage of development and therapeutic area.  Toward the end we will address the impact of accelerated approvals on cycle times.

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Enough shilling for the day, lots to cover this week, let's get started!

THE CHANGING LANDSCAPE OF CLINICAL TRIAL PRODUCTIVITY

The development of new drugs is a complex and often lengthy process. IQVIA introduces the concept of The Clinical Development Productivity Index (CDPI) which is a tool used to track clinical trial productivity. It combines three key factors: 

• Success rates (how many drugs make it through clinical trials)

• Complexity (the number of factors involved in trials)

• Duration (how long trials take)

Recent trends show a positive shift in clinical development productivity. The CDPI reached 17.4 in 2023, rebounding from a low of 12.8 in 2020 and approaching levels seen in 2017. This improvement is largely driven by an increase in success rates, particularly in Phase I, III, and regulatory approval stages. Interestingly, these trends vary across disease areas. Oncology and rare diseases have seen significant success rate improvements, while other areas require further improvement.

Clinical trial complexity also plays a role in productivity. While complexity increased in 2023, it remains lower than 2020 levels. This is partly due to a decrease in the number of countries and sites involved in trials, particularly for rare diseases and oncology. Emerging biopharma companies are leading this shift, with China playing a significant role in recent trends. Overall, these changes may streamline trials but could also impact generalizability of results.

Today we will go into detail on each of these concepts and share with you various supporting cuts of data on each topic.

CLINICAL TRIALS GET FASTER AND MORE SUCCESSFUL