Medication development: reducing casualties in the valley of death and providing support for survivors.

Ray et al (Ray et al., 2018) discuss several obstacles encountered in the transition from pre-clinical to human clinical testing in the development of novel medications for alcohol use disorders (AUD). A large number of promising drugs have perished in this transition phase, so large that the term "valley of death" has been proposed to characterize this perilous passage (Butler, 2008). Even when the valley of death has successfully been crossed the pathway to marketing remains highly problematic. In a paper focusing on the poor performance of the pharma industry to market new drugs in the central nervous system (CNS) domain (Miller, 2010), it is noted "CNS drugs cost more and take longer to bring to market than other types of drugs […], and only 8% of CNS drugs that make it to clinical trials end up being approved, about half the average success rate across all therapeutic areas. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.