UK report: State of the Discovery Nation 2018

A joint report by the UK’s BioIndustry Association (BIA) and the Medicines Discovery Catapult (MDC), a government-backed innovation center, based on surveys and over 100 in-depth interviews with senior executives of UK drug discovery companies, shows that global R&D productivity is under unprecedented pressure.

With the financial burden of disease rising faster than Gross Domestic Product (GDP) due to an aging population and the rise of chronic diseases, there is an urgent need for more cost-effective medicine development, the report notes. Despite this, around 40% of new drugs fail when they are first trialled in a patientand the majority fail at other stages of development. As a result, the number of drugs launched per $1billion of R&D spend has fallen nearly thirtyfold over the last 40 years.

In response to this, world leading opportunities exist for the UK to reshape the medicines discovery process to develop medicines greatly needed by patients. The report highlights that: