In the latest attempt to unpick the relative benefit of basic versus applied research, researchers have charted the drug discovery and development timelines of 28 'transformative' drugs. Nearly 80% of these medicines could be traced back to one or several basic science discoveries, they report in Science Translational Medicine .

The average time from first basic discovery to FDA approval was 31 years, with no differences for small molecules versus biologics. There was a trend towards shorter timelines for newer medicines, with a 26 year lag between seminal discovery and approval.

The analysis was run by Mark Fishman, former president of Novartis Institutes for BioMedical Research (NIBR) who is now at Harvard University, and his industry colleagues. The 28 'transformative drugs' were selected on the basis of an article published in 2013 in Nature Reviews Drug Discovery that surveyed more than 180 physicians across all medical areas to identify a short-list of important medicines. Fishman and his colleagues then worked with 80 experts to define the discoveries that led to those 28 medicines.

“For the vast majority of the medicines we examined, the foundational discoveries were made by scientists trying to understand nature. They had no evident intent to make a drug. In fact, for most of these drugs, decades elapsed and insights accumulated to refine the original observation. Only then did the potential for a new drug become clear and the search was on for a chemical or protein that might become a therapy,” the authors wrote in an associated opinion piece in STAT.

“Judging from the past, the development of new drugs will continue to be a lengthy journey. The first step, often recognized only in retrospect, likely will be an insight in yeast or fish or mice without any obvious relevance to a new medical breakthrough. There's really no shortcut. The only way to lay the foundation for the next generation of new medicines is to invest in learning the fundamental truths about how the body functions and how it falls apart,” they conclude.

The paper's supplementary information includes detailed discovery and development timelines for all 28 transformative medicines.