Acceleration of drug development: a collaboration of many stakeholders

Modern drugs are used to treat and prevent diseases that previously led to morbidity and mortality. There is a high cost to this achievement--investment for each successful drug can exceed $1.8 billion. Late-phase drug candidate failure decreases efficiency of drug development because each failure represents lost or delayed opportunity to develop successful drugs. Collaboration of stakeholders and the use of new science and knowledge management can reduce late-phase failure and accelerate drug development.