Quote:
Originally Posted by Trapper John
Well, being intimately involved in drug discovery/development for the last 25 years I have few thoughts on this subject:
1. It is easy to blame pharmaceutical companies, although not blameless, they are not totally responsible either.
2. Government funding is usually at the very early stage (discovery and proof-of concept) and amounts to <1% of the amount required to bring a new drug to market. Most of the government funding goes to University salaries and overhead. Universities retain the patent rights and recover their investment when the technology is sold (usually to a venture capital company).
3. The VC company will bundle the new technology and push it down to one of its portfolio companies to further develop the technology through the pre-IND and on to the IND/clinical phase of development. The cost to this stage is ~$100 million.
4. The pharmaceutical company's sweet spot for acquisition of a new drug candidate is the Phase II clinical trial stage. There is easily $300-$500 million to bring a drug candidate through this stage of development and ready for acquisition by a pharmaceutical company.
5. The acquisition cost will be $1-$2 Billion at least.
6. Now the real costs begin, including Phase 3 clinical studies, formulary costs, pharmacy benefit managers, insurance providers, and various other 'middle-men'. This phase adds a 10x multiple to a new drug's cost before it ever reaches market!
The cost and complexity of taking a new drug to market requires the infrastructure of one of the established pharma companies. They're not the bad guys. It's the cost associated with the process. Frankly, I don't see a point to reform without tisks such as reduction in drug safety/efficacy
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I'm just curious........what phase of testing are we in now with these covid vaccines? I'm guessing this is probably the first time humans have been used for phase II and phase III tests?
I only bring this up because, to my knowledge, the quickest testing and brought to market ever done was on the mumps vaccine and that took 4 years.