Use case · indication selection
Pick the indication the evidence supports.
One asset, several plausible indications, and one shot at choosing. Score each candidate on the same six pillars — rationale, design precedent, recruitable cohort, competitive density, price and patent runway — with every figure cited to public data.
Candidate indications, ranked on the same evidence.
The situation
The asset is real. The indication is a choice.
Indication selection sets the ceiling on everything downstream — trial size, enrolment difficulty, competitive density, achievable price, exclusivity at launch. It is usually decided on the strength of the preclinical story in one indication and a hunch about the rest.
- Pillars scored per candidate indication
- 6
- Analyses run identically for each
- 30+
- Every comparison linked to public records
- Cited
What happens today
One indication gets analysed. The others get an opinion.
Doing this properly means running a full landscape, cohort and commercial analysis per candidate. That is weeks of work each, so in practice only the front-runner receives it.
The front-runner is chosen before the analysis
Whichever indication the preclinical work happened to target becomes the default, and the analysis that follows is about confirming it rather than comparing it.
Recruitability is not part of the comparison
A large prevalent indication can be harder to recruit into than a small one, once eligibility criteria and competing trials are counted. That reversal is invisible without the analysis.
Competitive density is assessed by impression
"Crowded" is a feeling unless someone counts the active and recruiting trials in each candidate indication, and who is running them.
Price and runway differ per indication
The standard of care, the value-based price it supports and the exclusivity remaining at launch can differ sharply between two indications for the same molecule.
What you do instead
Every candidate, the same work-up.
Biological rationale per indication
Target validation and pharmacology evidence assessed for each candidate, rather than assumed to transfer from the one the preclinical work used.
Design precedent and prior failures
What has been tried in each indication, what the design norm looks like, and which comparable trials failed and why.
Recruitable cohort, not prevalence
Cohort sizing and eligibility complexity per indication — the pool you could actually enrol from, which frequently reorders the candidates.
Competitive and site density
How many comparable trials are already recruiting in each indication, where, and what that does to your enrolment timeline.
Price, market and runway per candidate
Standard of care, value-based price, market size and exclusivity remaining at expected launch — computed separately for each indication.
One comparable ranking
Each candidate gets the same six pillars and the same directional probability treatment, so the shortlist is a comparison rather than a preference.
What runs, and who drafts
The scope for this job
Indication choice moves every pillar at once — the same molecule can have strong rationale and an unrecruitable cohort in one indication and the reverse in another, which is exactly why all six have to run per candidate.
Pillars involved
How it runs
One molecule, several futures.
Name the molecule and the candidates
The asset — or just its drug class — plus the indications you are weighing. No protocol is needed at this stage.
Each candidate gets the full assessment
Six pillars per indication, computed identically, against around 50 live public sources — with the differences between candidates traceable to specific evidence.
Choose, and record the reasoning
Rank the candidates, choose, and sign the decision — so the indications you did not pick remain a documented option rather than a forgotten conversation.
What lands on your desk
A ranked shortlist with the trade-offs visible.
Including the indications you rejected and why — which is the part that becomes valuable when the lead indication runs into trouble.
What lands on your desk
Indication comparison + per-indication assessments
- A side-by-side comparison of candidate indications across the six pillars.
- Recruitable-cohort estimates per indication with eligibility burden broken out.
- Competitive and site density per indication, with the trials already recruiting.
- Design precedent and comparable-trial outcomes for each candidate.
- Standard of care, value-based price, market size and exclusivity runway per indication.
- A directional probability of success per candidate, derived the same way for each.
Honest limits
Where this stops
What this does not do for you. Naming it here is cheaper for both of us than finding it in a procurement review.
It assesses public evidence per indication. Your unpublished preclinical data may make a strong case for a candidate this analysis reads as weak — bring it to the comparison.
Probabilities are directional and comparable across candidates because the method is identical; that is not absolute calibration.
It does not model regulatory strategy — orphan designation, accelerated pathways and agency interactions are strategic choices it can inform but not decide.
For indications thinly represented in public registries, the assessment states the evidence gap instead of extrapolating across it.
The ranking is decision-support. Portfolio fit, manufacturing constraints and organisational capability sit alongside it.
Questions
The ones you would ask first
How many indications can we compare?
Each candidate is a full assessment run on the same six pillars, and they are returned on one comparison view. Practical limits are about how many candidates are genuinely plausible, not about throughput.
We only have a drug class, not a lead molecule. Can we still run it?
Yes. A drug class and a set of candidate indications is enough to produce a comparable read across the candidates.
Does it account for orphan or accelerated pathways?
It surfaces the regulatory precedent for comparable programs in each indication, which informs that strategy. Choosing a designation or pathway remains a regulatory judgment.
What if the analysis contradicts our preclinical rationale?
Then you have a specific, cited disagreement to resolve — usually about recruitability or competitive density rather than about biology. That is a much better position than an unexamined default.
Choose the indication with the evidence in front of you.
Name the molecule — or just its class — and the indications you are weighing. We’ll run the same six-pillar assessment on each and return one cited comparison.