OPINION Assessing the translatability of drug projects: what needs to be scored to predict success?

Drug development projects have high attrition rates, often because efficacy and safety issues have not been foreseen. More effective prediction of 'translational success' could therefore have a key role in addressing the widely acknowledged problems with weak drug development pipelines. Here, I discuss how a scoring system to systematically assess key determinants of translational success, such as biomarkers and animal and human data, could help identify deficiencies and potential improvements, and increase the reliability of portfolio risk estimates.