Impact of Precision Medicine on Efficiencies of Novel Drug Development in Cancer.

Precision medicine (PM) offers opportunities for reducing the costs, burdens, and time associated with drug development. We examined time, number of trials, indications tested, and patient burden needed to achieve first U.S. Food and Drug Administration license for all five novel anticancer PM drugs and all 10 novel non-PM drugs receiving U.S. Food and Drug Administration approval during 2010-2014. The 15 drug portfolios encompassed 242 trials: 87 for PM drugs and 155 for non-PM drugs. Embase and MEDLINE databases were searched for all prelicensure clinical trials, and data on time, patient numbers, indications tested, and total treatment-emergent grade 3-5 adverse events were measured from the first trial of each drug. We did not find patterns suggesting greater efficiencies in PM compared with non-PM. Gains in efficiency for PM drug development may be offset by challenges with recruitment.