Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

  • FROM THE ANALYST'S COUCH

Herding in the drug development pipeline

  1. Christian Fougner

    1. McKinsey and Company, Boston, MA, USA.

    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed  Google Scholar

  2. Julie Cannon

    1. McKinsey and Company, Boston, MA, USA.

    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed  Google Scholar

  3. Lydia The

    1. McKinsey and Company, Boston, MA, USA.

    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed  Google Scholar

  4. Jeffrey F. Smith

    1. McKinsey and Company, Boston, MA, USA.

    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed  Google Scholar

  5. Olivier Leclerc

    1. McKinsey and Company, Boston, MA, USA.

    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed  Google Scholar

Recent years have seen several landmark therapeutic successes, such as the development of antibodies that target PD1 or PDL1 and cell therapies that target CD19 in immuno-oncology. In parallel, we have also observed a herding of biopharma pipelines around a small set of such approaches. Although these approaches are often proving highly efficacious, it is unclear if incremental investment into late-entrant assets represents an efficient use of biopharma research and development (R&D) resources, both with respect to expected patient benefit and commercial success (Nat Rev. Drug Disc. 12, 419–420; 2013).

Access options

Rent or buy this article

Prices vary by article type

from$1.95

to$39.95

Learn more

Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout

Nature Reviews Drug Discovery 22, 617-618 (2023)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41573-023-00063-3

Supplementary Information

  1. Supplementary information

Competing Interests

The authors of this article are employees of McKinsey & Company, a management consultancy that works with the world’s leading biopharmaceutical companies on innovation issues. The analysis in this study was funded by McKinsey’s Life Science practice and undertaken independently of any other organizations.

Nature Careers

Jobs

Nature Briefing

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox. Sign up for Nature Briefing

Search

Advanced search

Quick links