Cost and Time of New Drugs Increasingly Prohibitive: Kalorama Report

NEW YORK - March 28, 2013 - PRLog -- The demand for new drugs remains unabated, but the cost and need to bring those drugs to market is ever-increasing and intensifying. The cost of drug development has soared during the past decade driving pharmaceutical companies to look for new, smarter ways of conducting clinical research. Driven by mounting market pressures, companies are increasingly implementing outsourcing strategies to increase revenues through faster drug development. By decreasing their in-house facilities and staff, and outsourcing more of their R&D functions, pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies are reshaping the drug development services industry.

The cost and time of developing and bringing a drug to market is over $1.3 billion and  often takes as long as 15 years, if not longer. A key cost driver is the large number of failures during the expensive clinical trial phases. Research illustrates that over 80% of the drugs that enter clinical trials eventually fail to get approved by the FDA.  

Even if funds are available, there’s no telling if a drug candidate will make it.  A study from the Tufts Center for Drug Development concluded that 75% of the drugs that enter phase I move forward to Phase II, however, only 42% of those progress to Phase III. Of those Phase III drugs, only 64% successfully make it through to FDA approval.