Top 10 oncology clinical trial failure signals

Oncology is the largest disease area in the current Clinical Trial Failures dataset. That makes it useful, but also easy to misread. A terminated cancer trial is not automatically a failed drug. Some studies stop because of enrollment, portfolio strategy, operations, or changes in standard of care. The ranking below focuses on repeated intervention-level signals and separates likely biological stops from broader stopped-trial volume.

The goal is not to declare a final winner or loser. It is to give analysts a practical starting point: which oncology drugs or interventions appear repeatedly in stopped records, how often the stop language looks biological, and which source record should be opened first for verification.

Use this page as an entry point into the database. The table is strongest when combined with trial-level review, sponsor context, endpoint history, and the original ClinicalTrials.gov record.

How to read this ranking

This ranking groups oncology stopped-trial records by the first listed intervention name in the compact dataset. A record can mention more than one intervention, so the table should be read as a screening view rather than a definitive product-level failure database.

Likely biological signals include efficacy/futility and safety buckets. Operational, enrollment, funding, regulatory, strategic, and other/unknown stops are counted in total stopped records but are not treated as biological failure signals.

For oncology, context matters especially strongly. Trials may stop because the competitive landscape changes, standard therapy evolves, a biomarker strategy is revised, or a sponsor prioritizes another program. That is why each row includes an example NCT record to verify before using the ranking in a report.