Drug research and development are embracing translational research for its potential to increase the number of drugs successfully brought to clinical applications. Using the publicly available PubMed database, we sought to describe the status of drug translational research, the distribution of translational lags for all drugs as well as the collaborations between basic science and clinical science in drug research. For each drug, an indicator called Translational Lag was proposed to quantify the interval time from its first PubMed article to its first clinical article. Meanwhile, the triangle of biomedicine was also used to visualize the status and multidisciplinary collaboration of drug translational research. The results showed that only 18.1% (24,410) of drugs/compounds had been successfully entering clinical research. It averagely took 14.38 years (interquartile range, 4 to 21 years) for a drug from the initial basic discovery to its first clinical research. In addition, the results also revealed that, in drug research, there was rare cooperation between basic science and clinical science, which were more inclined to cooperate within disciplines.

翻译：药物研发正积极拥抱转化研究，因其有望增加成功进入临床应用阶段的药物数量。本研究借助公共PubMed数据库，旨在描述药物转化研究现状、各类药物的转化延迟分布，以及药物研究中基础科学与临床科学之间的协作情况。针对每种药物，我们提出了一项名为“转化延迟”的指标，用于量化其从首篇PubMed文章发表到首篇临床文章发表之间的时间间隔。同时，采用生物医学三角模型对药物转化研究的状态及多学科协作情况进行可视化分析。结果显示，仅有18.1%（24,410种）的药物/化合物成功进入临床研究阶段。药物从最初的基础发现到首次临床研究平均耗时14.38年（四分位距：4至21年）。此外，结果还表明，在药物研究中，基础科学与临床科学之间合作稀少，二者更倾向于在各自学科内部开展合作。