All of us need new, improved medicines. Medication that present incremental advantages (typically referred to as “me too” medication) are good, however really revolutionary therapies are even higher. Nonetheless, how does one separate how “novel” a therapy is? Is there a solution to quantify this?

In reality there may be. A technique to do that relies on the therapy’s molecular construction. For example, the Tanimoto distance measures the the fraction of chemical options which might be shared by the 2 chemical compounds. Nikolova et al. 2004 summarizes this strategy which is calculated as follows:

Krieger, Li and Papanikolau 2022 use this methodology to quantify how drug improvement for novel medication has way more optimistic informational spillovers on the drug improvement than incremental medication. This paper offers an instance of an software of Tanimoto distance under.

Utilizing the Tanimoto distance as a measure of novelty, the authors discover the next:

…novel drug candidates are much less prone to receive FDA approval however are based mostly on extra worthwhile patents. In keeping with a easy mannequin of pricey exterior finance, we present {that a} optimistic shock to corporations’ web value leads corporations to develop extra novel medication. This implies that even massive corporations might behave as if they’re threat averse, decreasing their willingness to funding in probably worthwhile radical innovation.

You’ll be able to learn the complete paper right here.