AstraZeneca boasts of quadrupling of R&D productivity at biotech unit

An in-house authored report from AstraZeneca (LSE: AZN) claims a “more than four-fold improvement in R&D productivity” stemming from the introduction in 2011 of a new approach to R&D at the company’s IMED Biotech Unit.

The new ethos, dubbed the ‘5R framework’, focuses on “right target, right patient, right tissue, right safety and right commercial potential.”

The report shows that the research unit’s success rate in discovering new compounds, which then progress through the pipeline to completion of Phase III clinical trials, has increased from 4% in the period 2005-2010 to 19% in the period 2012-2016.