Talk:Lists of investigational drugs

Guide on how to make these pages

I am the original creator of these list of investigational drug pages. I'd like to describe the process by which I make them for documentation purposes and in case others would like to make new lists of investigational drugs themselves.

I use Springer's AdisInsight database of investigational drugs. I don't have subscription access to the database, but the entries are partially public and you can search them with Google Search. First I decide what condition or group of conditions I'd like to make a list of investigational drugs for. (Alternatively, I might decide to make a list for a specific class of drugs rather than for a specific condition.) I then search Google with the following query:

site:adisinsight.springer.com/drugs/ "<condition1>" OR "<condition2>" OR "<condition3>"

You have to explore AdisInsight first to see what specific terms they use for condition names. I've used the list of mental disorders page here on Wikipedia in the case of psychiatric disorders to get an idea of what condition names to check AdisInsight for.

With the above search query, I go to the last page of Google Search results and click "repeat the search with the omitted results included" at the very end to ensure that no results get hidden or excluded. Then I open every result of every page in a new tab, go through them all, and add each one to a text file. I try to open all of the results in new tabs at once as opposed do doing them in batches of say 5 or 10 pages of results at a time because the search results can unexpectedly change if you wait too long and then results/entries can be unintentionally missed.

With this approach, you can comprehensively go through and catalogue investigational drugs for a given condition or of a given drug class. In terms of how to format and structure the lists (and keep things consistent across them), just check the existing lists and follow the same scheme.

There are two important limitations of this approach however. One is that AdisInsight does not include older investigational drugs from before roughly the mid-1990s (by my estimate). You will have to manually find and catalogue these if you wish to include them, which is more difficult and not as straightforward. Another limitation is that Google Search will not actually properly retrieve all of the relevant AdisInsight pages for a given query and some pages will be missed. There are a few reasons for this. One is that some of these pages just do not show up in the search results for some reason that I am unclear on. Another reason is that not all AdisInsight pages are actually indexed in Google Search and these will not show up either. Finally, Google Search only gives you up to 30 pages of results. If your conditions(s) have fewer than 30 pages of results, you're fine, but if they have more than that, you'll only be able to do up to the first 30 pages. One option to get around this is to do queries for each condition term individually as opposed to together (which can get you under the cap sometimes). Another solution, if that isn't sufficient, could be to use Google Search's '-<search term>' operator to temporarily exclude certain terms (e.g., a given drug class) and thus reduce the number of results. You could then do the same query again with the excluded terms included to get those results. Subscription access to AdisInsight is a final way to get around the preceding issues.

A few other databases of investigational drugs are Synapse by patsnap, Pryzm by Ozmosi, and Inxight Drugs by NIH. The investigational drug pages/entries for these databases are not as straightforward or comprehensive as the AdisInsight pages, so I always use AdisInsight instead. But these other databases can be useful as supplementary resources, especially in cases in which AdisInsight drug entries are missing or can't be found.

Note that these lists should only include drugs under formal pharmaceutical development. If it's in formal development, it'll be registered with AdisInsight and so on. If it's not in formal development, then it won't be and shouldn't be included in the lists (and if others add such drugs, they should be removed). Sometimes however I've included a section for other drugs of interest with the title "Formal development never or not yet started".

A major concern regarding these lists is that they will become outdated with time. Minor updates can of course be made manually, for instance when a given drug changes developmental phase (e.g. advances to higher phase or is discontinued) or a new drug emerges and needs to be added. But to properly and comprehensively update a given list, the whole process will need to be done again, whilst also considering and making sure that nothing is missed from the old list. This is a very tedious and difficult process. And I will certainly not be maintaining all these lists in the long-term as it is way too much work to do manually. Perhaps some better solution can be developed by someone in the future, for instance some automated process that involves scraping AdisInsight and programmatically generating the lists. Though the pages will become outdated, I think they still have substantial value as they are right now and will continue to have such value even once they become substantially outdated. In any case, I always include a disclaimer in the lede sections that the pages may become outdated along with the date at which they were last comprehensively updated.

– AlyInWikiWonderland (talk, contribs) 00:39, 4 June 2026 (UTC)

Updates needed badly

Large proportion of the mentioned compounds seems have dropped from research. 88.115.35.69 (talk) 02:38, 16 June 2021 (UTC)

Idiopathic Hypersomnia

Roth Classifications: Roth Type I: Classic Type: Polysymptomatic with EDS (Excessive Daytime Sleepiness), Sleep Drunkenness, Autonomic Instability (Orthostatic Hypotension, Orthostatic Syncope, Raynaud’s Phenomenon, Headaches {Migraines and Tension Headaches), Sleep Drunkenness, Sleep Inertia, Repeat Sleep Latency Testing (RSLT), Sleep Arousal Difficulties, Prolonged Sleep (greater than 12 hours in a single sleep episode) Roth Type II: Excessive Daytime Sleepiness without associated Symptomatology Associated with the “Somnogen” Subtance found in the cerebrospinal fluid in affected patients with hypersensitivity to GABBA alpha receptors responsible for somnolence similar to someone who was given a continuous infusion of Ativan and benzodiazepine-like medications in spite of not taking any such drugs. It’s thought to be genetic, although very rare in patients without the genetic forms of narcolepsy without associated cataplexy Ruth Deerfield, M.D. (talk) 08:20, 31 January 2022 (UTC)