# A target de-risking index that counts failures as well as successes

Source: https://onco.cc/ideas/idea-tr2-target-failure-index/  
OnCo record `idea-tr2-target-failure-index` (Idea). Data CC BY-NC 4.0, attribute "Data from OnCo (onco.cc)"; commercial use needs a licence.

## TL;DR

For each drug target, show how many programmes have been tried against it and how many failed, so new teams know what they are up against.

## Summary

Target prioritisation platforms (Open Targets) weight positive evidence. A complementary index that aggregates discontinued programmes, failed trials and deposited negative preclinical results per target and indication, with reasons where known, would give a Bayesian prior: a target with eight failed programmes and no success should require a stronger hypothesis than one never tried. Publicly available pipeline data makes a first version feasible now.

## Fields

- Kind: Idea
- Last checked: 2026-09-08
- Hypothesis: Targets in the highest-failure decile will continue to attract new programmes at the same rate as others unless the index is visible; where visible, new programme starts against them will fall by at least a quarter unless accompanied by a new mechanistic rationale.
- Rationale: Herding on a few targets (IDO1, CD47, TIGIT) with repeated failure is a documented pattern. Making the failure count visible changes the decision calculus.
- Proposed test: Build the index for 300 oncology targets from public pipeline and trial data; publish; track new programme initiations by index decile over three years.
- Maturity: speculative
- Actor: data

## Sources

- Open Targets: https://platform.opentargets.org/

## Connected records

- collections: [Open Targets Platform](https://onco.cc/collections/open-targets/)
- ideas: [A machine-readable taxonomy of why cancer drugs fail](https://onco.cc/ideas/idea-tr2-failure-taxonomy/), [A registry for preclinical experiments that did not work](https://onco.cc/ideas/idea-tr2-preclinical-negative-registry/)
- bottlenecks: [Failures are hidden](https://onco.cc/bottlenecks/b-negative-results/), [The undruggable drivers](https://onco.cc/bottlenecks/b-undruggable-targets/)

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