Early Decision-Making in Drug Development: The Potential Role of Pharmaco-EEG and Pharmaco-Sleep

The pharmaceutical industry has been suffering from low clinical success rates of new drugs for some time with particularly high attrition in early clinical development, especially for drugs aimed at central targets. Both pharmaco-electroencephalography (EEG) and pharmaco-sleep, along with other biomarker techniques, have significant potential to assist with this problem by enabling early decisions to be made about the likelihood of a compound proving successful in the clinic. This paper discusses the role and points of application of biomarker techniques in early drug development. It proposes a framework for the use of pharmaco-EEG and pharmaco-sleep in drug development that (i) relies on the combination of preclinical data and an understanding of translatability to generate robust hypotheses for testing in early clinical studies and (ii) is backed up by a clear decision-making process. The areas that need further development before this framework can be put fully into practice are discussed, along with some possible routes by which this could be achieved through precompetitive co-operation within the industry.