Discontinued in 2013: diabetic drugs

Introduction: The increasing prevalence of diabetes, with no cure on the horizon, continues to provide biopharmaceutical companies with an incentive to develop novel therapies and improve existing compounds. Areas covered: The following paper provides a summary of the experimental drug projects targeted for diabetes and associated complications that were discontinued in 2013. The discontinued projects, highlighted in this article, were identified via biopharmaceutical company pipelines, annual reports, and press releases. The authors also used other sources including: Google, ClinicalTrials.gov, and PubMed. Compounds were in various stages of development at termination and many of them had been associated with favorable effects in earlier studies. Expert opinion: There were two main reasons for the termination of antidiabetic compounds that dominated 2013: concerns about safety and efficacy. Attempts to discover a novel mechanism that is both safe and effective in human disease present many challenges, not least is the cost for developing new treatments.