Analyzing historic data of the progress of drug compounds through the drug development pipeline, Nelson et al. 2015 [3] concluded pipeline drug targets with human genetic evidence of disease association are twice as likely to lead to approved drugs. The specific claim of doubled approval probability, if true, could lead to fewer failed clinical programs thereby lowering drug development costs. Indeed, using the estimated impact of genetics from Nelson et al. [3], increasing the fraction of NMEs in development with genetic support from the current value of 15% to 50% is predicted to decrease the direct R&D cost per launched drug by 22 ± 13% [4].
