In a recent post we introduced the idea of the Personalized Medicine Scorecard, and to further develop these rankings we promised to analyze the pipelines of each company in the Scorecard. Download the Scorecard Whitepaper here.

As a first step in this effort, this week we present an analysis of the oncology pipelines for three companies: AstraZeneca, Genentech, and Novartis.

 

 This table lists the total number of new molecular entities and new biologics for three companies, and the number and percentage of these drugs that are personalized medicines, i.e. include biomarkers in the trial inclusion criteria.

100% of the 63 new cancer drugs in the pipelines of the three companies under inquiry are targeted therapeutics, i.e. they are meant to inhibit or activate specific genes or gene products. 33 of these new drugs are personalized, i.e. they work for specific patient sub-populations that can be molecularly identified with a companion diagnostic test.

Among the three companies, AstraZeneca has the largest total number of new cancer drugs (29 new molecular entities and biologics) in its pipeline, thanks in large part to its acquisition of Medimmune (10 drugs).

Novartis has significantly the highest percentage of new cancer drugs in its pipeline that are personalized at 76%. Novartis is also the company with the largest number of personalized drugs in phase 2 and 3 trials. AstraZeneca has the largest number in phase 1.

There are 19 different companion diagnostic biomarkers associated with these new cancer drugs. In a future post I will break them down individually and link to detailed information for each in BiomarkerBase.