Combining strengths in drug discovery and development by partnering and outsourcing has been shown to increase the likelihood of success in bringing new products to the clinic (Clin. Pharmacol. Ther. 87, 272–277; 2010). In this context, a recent analysis by Lincker et al. from the European Medicines Agency (EMA) investigated the origin of new active substances (NASs) that were approved to enter the European market between 2010 and 2012 (Nature Rev. Drug Discov. 13 92–93 2014). They showed that a substantial proportion (~45%) of the 94 NASs approved in this time originated from small companies, academic institutions and public–private partnerships, and that most had been transferred to larger companies during development. However, this analysis did not assess whether the origin of a NAS is also associated with approval success or failure. Therefore, in this study we investigated whether self-originated NASs differed from acquired NASs with regard to the outcome of marketing applications at the EMA.

We included all NASs for which the EMA Committee for Medicinal Products for Human Use (CHMP) issued an opinion on the marketing authorization application (MAA) from 2009 to 2013 and categorized each NAS as either acquired or self-originated. The outcome was either 'approved' (positive opinion by the CHMP) or 'failed' (negative opinion or withdrawn by the applicant before a CHMP opinion). Furthermore, we stratified acquisitions according to the size of the applicant. For a more extensive description of the methodology and other investigated factors, see Supplementary information S1 (box), S2 (figure), S3 (table).

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