The Economics of Drug Development
The charts below illustrate the cost of drug development, research, and development funding. The data is not restricted to cancer drugs, but the key points are applicable to cancer drug development.
 |
- Costs are increasing
- Pharmaceutical research and development (R&D) exceeds federal National Institute of Health spending
- Federal R&D spending is leveling off, although pharmaceutical company spending continues to increase
- The clinical trial 'pipeline' is clogged
Drug developers are considering a variety of ways to help improve the clinical trial logjam. One company has formed a partnership with M.D. Anderson Cancer Center and other centers to test drugs using the large banks of tumor tissue each institution has collected. That way, the company can figure out which types of tumors a drug might affect before it embarks on human testing.
 |
|---|
Another potential solution to the drug logjam is to run adaptive clinical trials, where the criteria for success would be adjusted as results come in. Based on early responses, doctors might recruit different types of patients midway through a trial. |
