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Nature Reviews Drug Discovery 7, 197–198 (1 March 2008) | doi:10.1038/nrd2531

Drug approvals and failures: implications for alliances

Elizabeth A. Czerepak & Stefan Ryser

The low number of drugs originating from large pharmaceutical companies despite growth in R&D expenditure and the increasing importance of biotech companies as a source of innovative potential therapies have been widely noted in recent years. With the aim of investigating these trends, we analysed the origins of drugs approved by the FDA and those failing in Phase III trials during the period January 2006 to December 2007.