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In the pharmaceutical industry, it is very common to see multiple drugs in development that go after the same target. Usually, there is a direct correlation between the recognition a target has and the number of competing agents. This is the case with “hot targets” such as PI3K,RAF and mTOR, which are pursued by many pharma and biotech companies.
In most cases (especially with targeted therapies), the different compounds are being developed in parallel, and there is no way of identifying a clear winner. This can persist even after approval. For instance, both BMS Pfizer and Novartis (NVS) have an mTOR inhibitor on the market for the treatment of renal cancer. It is clear both drugs are active but each compound was approved based on a different trial in a different patient population, so neither can claim superiority.
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