Dive Brief:
- The FDA approved 44 new drugs in 2014, the highest number the agency has given its stamp of approval to since the industry's record high in 1996.
- The group of newly-approved drugs covers 10 therapeutic areas, compared to last year's eight.
- Pharma leaders included Johnson & Johnson and GSK with eight approvals each and Roche with seven. Burgeoning AstraZeneca saw six new approvals.
Dive Insight:
Notably, infectious diseases was the clinical area with the most approvals, at 12 accounting for 27% of newly-approved drugs. This is a big win for this area of medicine, which hasn't seen a lot of R&D investment in recent years. (And several of these new drugs won Breakthrough Therapy Designations and produced pretty incredible results.)
While Gilead's Hep C drug got a lot of press, in general Hepatitis drugs accounted for only two of the 12 infectious diseases approvals. The other ten covered bacterial, viral, fungal and parasitic infections. Cancer drugs saw the second-largest approval rating, with eight approvals accounting for 18% of all approvals.