ChEMBL

Having seen todays surprise regulatory delay on ticagrelor - here is an interesting question. 'Is it possible to predict late stage attrition?' By this, I specifically mean is it possible to predict what potential drugs will be approved from a set of recently disclosed USANs. In 2010, there were 101 new USANs assigned (after removing redundancy through parents/salts, different salts, etc). Some of the 2010 USANs will themselves be salts of previous USANs (e.g. ibuprofen sodium), but this will be a small number.

So given that, on average, that around 20% of these will be eventually approved within the US, is it possible to predict which 20% will become real products?

If there is interest in a collaborative project (or maybe even a competition ;) ) on this, I will set up a small project area, INCHIs of the structures, etc. Based on historical averages, it will take about four years to get a reasonable readout, but it might be an interesting set of compounds to follow through (a little bit like the Up Series of documentaries, but for drugs, not kids).