During the past two decades, cancer incidence has steadily increased due to ageing populations, lifestyle and environmental factors, with great personal and national economic consequences. Concurrently, cancer treatments have improved with increased treatment options as well as lengthier disease and disease-free survival rates. The latest innovation in cancer treatments are targeted biological treatments, joining the current arsenal of surgery, radiotherapy and chemotherapy, particularly significant in latter stage cancers associated with very poor survival.
Despite this latest breakthrough in cancer treatment, this has in fact only opened the door to beginning to understand the complexity of cancer on a molecular and genetic basis. Oncology research and development (R&D) has the highest failure rate for new molecular entities (NME) and significantly higher development costs. Although tremendous scientific and economic barriers exist, the oncology development market has increased two-fold over the past five years.
This report aims to map current oncology R&D funding and management, primarily in Europe and the USA, to examine public-private relationships, current oncology R&D strategies and oncology innovation policies.