The numbers of anti-infective drugs, such as Cubist’s recently-approved Sivextro, have seen the fastest growth in recent years, as cancer drugs have become slightly less dominant.
Don Seiffert
BioFlash Editor- Boston Business Journal
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The number of drugs now in development in the state is up 45 percent in just two years, and more of those drugs are aimed at diseases other than cancer — Greater Boston’s traditional focus.
Partly due to the spate of new biotech companies in the past few years, and partly through continued strong seed-stage investment in biotechs, there has been an sharp increase in drugs in the pipeline at Massachusetts-based companies, according to a report released this week by MassBio. The Industry Snapshot 2014 finds there are now 1,384 drugs in all phases of development in the state. The majority of those (71 percent) are either research projects or else haven’t begin human trials yet. However, on the other end of the spectrum, 224 of them are in mid- to late-stage trials, with another nine filed and awaiting approval.
That’s significantly more than just two years ago, when there were 955 drugs in all phases of development, and 191 in mid- to late-stage trials, according to MassBio’s report from 2012 (Last year, the total was 1,174 total drugs in development in the state).
But equally as interesting as the growth is the changing balance of what those drugs are aimed at. As recently as 2011, 43 percent of the drugs being worked on in the area were in oncology. That percentage has gradually been whittled down to 35 percent today, while areas like fighting infections and diseases of the central nervous system have grown.
The biggest growth has been in “anti-infectives” — a group that includes antibiotics as well as drugs to fight infectious diseases such as hepatitis C and herpes. Those made up just 9 percent of the total drugs in development in 2011 but now represent 16 percent of them.
Earlier this week I wrote about the growth in the number of approved drugs in recent years, as well as the increase in patients they can treat.
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