-
Asked by anon-196319 to Paddy on 6 Mar 2019.
-
Paddy Sudhakar answered on 6 Mar 2019:
Well that comes down to the actual costs involved in finding a drug with a desired effect. According to the statistics, only 3-4 for every 100 tested drugs end up past the clinical trials and from those 3-4, only 1 in the market. So, as you can see, the hit rate is only 1% or so. This means they have to make up the costs incurred on researching the 100 drugs and that is possible only if the price of the 1 successful drug is high enough. In addition, the drive for profit also raises the price of the drug. Hope it helped
-
Comments
Sebastian commented on :
The average cost of discovering a drug and getting it to the point where it can be given to patients is around $250m. This also takes around 10 years on average. These enormous costs have to be paid out before a company can even sell a drug to customers so this often results in the price being as large as it is.
Fiona commented on :
The number of people that get a drug from idea to market is huge and they all need to buy food and pay for their rent/accommodation. A big cancer project in my group has 9 chemists working on making hundreds of molecules to test as well as several biologists who do the actual testing of the molecules as well. It wouldn’t be fair to not pay them for the skills they’ve spent years developing. Add in the cost of maintaining lab equipment, buying chemicals, paying the bills to keeps the lights on in the lab, the huge about of data processing and computer power needed in clinical trials involving hundreds if not thousands of patients…that money needs to be made back somehow.
Durg companies often charge more for a particular drug because it allows them to fund multiple other drug projects, most of which will likely fail at some point. Drug discovery is hard and expensive. I wish it wasn’t that way but its the current model we’ve got.
Charity funded research helps take the pressure of charging as much money for your drug at the end of the process but it’s really just because the money is coming from elsewhere. The ice bucket challenge alone helped to fund the discovery of a protein that may be involved in motor neuron disease, which if the right drug is made, could make it become a disease of the past.
Fiona commented on :
There is also a lot of “drug repurposing” going on in our field at the moment. Recycling failed drugs from projects that were shut down for whatever reason and using those molecules in new ways has led to molecules reaching the market in a lot less time because the initial leg work has already been done!