R&D Matters – The Five Top Research & Development Stories of 2016

The top R&D story of the year, in the eyes of Scrip readers, was the disaster that befell Portuguese company Bial-Portela & CA SA when one volunteer died and several others were hospitalized during a Phase I trial of its novel inhibitor of FAAH – known as BIA 10-2474 – for various neurological conditions. Indeed, this was one of the top stories of the year, and is detailed in the companion piece 2016 – The Pharma Year In Review. But failures in other trials provided the more usual drug development tragedies for other companies and, by extension, the patients who lost a potential life-saving treatment option.

Chief among these was the surprise failure of Bristol-Myers Squibb Co.’s PD-1 inhibitor Opdivo in the much-anticipated CheckMate 026 study in first-line lung cancer.