The changing world of drug development: an academic research organization’s perspective on the “Seven Wonders” of the future world of anticancer drug development

Cancer poses a considerable economic burden to healthcare systems worldwide, so healthcare payers will only pay for “performance” in the future. It is likely that new “wonders” have emerged and as a scientific community we need to learn how we can make future cancer research more efficient. Biobanking and imaging platforms will allow full use of this wealth of data for defining and testing hypotheses before the launch of fewer, but ambitious, pivotal clinical studies targeting large therapeutic benefit. Clinical trials must be based on optimized trial designs with sound methodologies and high qualities. These multidisciplinary therapeutic strategies need to be in the new generation of patient treatment planning. In order to accelerate patient access to new treatments and techniques, better harmonized regulatory procedures and new forms of multi-stakeholder collaboration are needed in future drug development.