State of the Discovery Nation 2018

The Medicines Discovery Catapult and BioIndustry Association call on the R&D community to address five themes to help boost productivity

This report, based on surveys and over 100 in-depth interviews with senior executives of UK drug discovery companies, shows that global R&D productivity is under unprecedented pressure. In response to this, world-leading opportunities exist for the UK to reshape the medicines discovery process to develop medicines greatly needed by patients. The report highlights that:

• Global R&D productivity is under unprecedented pressure
• The model of medicines R&D must be radically reshaped to meet patient needs
• A key problem is reliance on using inadequate models for human diseases
• Commercialising emerging technology will require new models of collaboration
• Data science is now indispensable to medicines R&D: research data is now generated in such high volumes that the ability to harness it has become a critical factor in developing new medicines
• It is imperative for the UK to provide industry with straightforward, well-governed access to consented patient data and human tissue samples – this is an acute problem for SMEs

Read Report

Read the press release on the launch of State of the Discovery Nation 2018.