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| Table 5 Criteria for Assessing Discovery Projects | | | Examples of quantitative endpoints | | Risk | Technical feasibility | People skills
Research facilities
Financially realistic goals
Type of external support required | | Therapeutic relevance | Efficacy in vitro
Efficacy in animal models
Predictability of animal models
In vivo selectivity of drug action | | Reward | Market | Size of patient population
Medical need
Innovation
Patent protection | | Competition | Value of core competencies | | Sources: Refs. [35,36]. |
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a novel approach to drug treatment? Does the company have secure patent protection for these discoveries? |
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For research projects, assessing the competition cannot be determined by market share. There is no way to determine how many competitors will launch similar products at the same time. However, one can gauge the competitive advantage by assessing the company's core competencies: how strong is the research approach compared to the competitors in terms of screening techniques, animal models, patent protection, and key collaborators? |
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In the future drug discovery will be driven by an environment that demands minimizing costs and maximizing the therapeutic benefit to the patient and other pharmaceutical customers. Innovation is the best means to achieve a major therapeutic advance and therefore produces the highest rewards. The dilemma is that truly novel research approaches, by definition, have no proven therapeutic relevance, are probably costly to implement, and usually require sophisticated technologies. There is no guarantee that these efforts will lead to identification of a new drug, there is no way to determine in advance how long it will take to identify a lead chemical structure using these approaches, and there are no guidelines on how long one should continue before giving up the search. Thus, while the most attractive research projects are those that yield high rewards at low risk, these projects are rare. Innovation is almost always associated with high risk. Innovative projects are certainly worth the risk, if the portfolio is balanced with other projects to offset the overall risk to the company. Furthermore, analysis using quantitative criteria not only assesses the value of the research activities but also provides an opportunity for |
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