[The life cycle of clinical drug research]

Recently, it was shown that more than 40% of the clinical drug trials in the Netherlands does not reach the stage of publication. Although the non-publication rate of clinical trials seems to have improved compared to previous studies, it is still far from optimal, in particular among phase I trials. In this article the life cycle of clinical drug research is discussed, in order to explain the non-publication rate in the Netherlands and to point out how the publication rate of phase I trials could be improved.