Observation
Copyright ©2012 Baishideng Publishing Group Co., Limited. All rights reserved.
World J Clin Oncol. Jan 10, 2012; 3(1): 1-6
Published online Jan 10, 2012. doi: 10.5306/wjco.v3.i1.1
Serendipity in anticancer drug discovery
Emily Hargrave-Thomas, Bo Yu, Jóhannes Reynisson
Emily Hargrave-Thomas, Auckland Bioengineering Institute, The University of Auckland, Auckland 1142, New Zealand
Bo Yu, Jóhannes Reynisson, School of Chemical Sciences, The University of Auckland, Auckland 1142, New Zealand
Author contributions: Hargrave-Thomas E collected and analysed the data and wrote the manuscript; Yu B analysed the data; and Reynisson J provided scientific supervision.
Correspondence to: Dr. Jóhannes Reynisson, School of Chemical Sciences, The University of Auckland, Private Bag 92019, Auckland 1142, New Zealand. j.reynisson@auckland.ac.nz
Telephone: +64-9-3737599 Fax: +64-9-3737422
Received: September 22, 2011
Revised: December 19, 2011
Accepted: January 7, 2012
Published online: January 10, 2012
Abstract

It was found that the discovery of 5.8% (84/1437) of all drugs on the market involved serendipity. Of these drugs, 31 (2.2%) were discovered following an incident in the laboratory and 53 (3.7%) were discovered in a clinical setting. In addition, 263 (18.3%) of the pharmaceuticals in clinical use today are chemical derivatives of the drugs discovered with the aid of serendipity. Therefore, in total, 24.1% (347/1437) of marketed drugs can be directly traced to serendipitous events confirming the importance of this elusive phenomenon. In the case of anticancer drugs, 35.2% (31/88) can be attributed to a serendipitous event, which is somewhat larger than for all drugs. The therapeutic field that has benefited the most from serendipity are central nervous system active drugs reflecting the difficulty in designing compounds to pass the blood-brain-barrier and the lack of laboratory-based assays for many of the diseases of the mind.

Keywords: Anticancer drugs; Drug discovery and development; Serendipity