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Cost of developing new drugs may be lower than industry claims: trial

(www.theguardian.com)
275 points swores | 1 comments | 25 Apr 24 12:25 UTC | HN request time: 0.209s | source
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streptomycin ◴[26 Apr 24 19:58 UTC] No.40173514[source]▶
Its own bill for landmark trials of a four-drug combination treatment for drug-resistant tuberculosis came to €34m (£29m).

Okay, how does that compare to what pharma companies spend? The article cites some unrelated numbers, doesn't actually compare.

A quick Google search says:

The average cost of phase 1, 2, and 3 clinical trials across therapeutic areas is around $4, 13, and 20 million respectively.

So... not really that different? What's the big deal here?

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throwaway35777 ◴[26 Apr 24 20:06 UTC] No.40173613[source]▶
Don't successful drugs also have to pay for the failed trials?
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jrsdav ◴[26 Apr 24 20:38 UTC] No.40173995[source]▶
This is essentially true. Pharma is incredibly expensive (for lots of different reasons), with R&D taking up a huge portion of those costs.

So yes, it's safe to assume that part of the accounting around those published costs in the billions are all of the failed candidates that never even made it to trials (the failure rate varies depending on the area of biology and the type of drug, but it's generally around 9 out of every 10 candidates [1]. By the time you get to trials, that ratio gets even more abysmal).

Disclaimer -- I work for Recursion, a company built around this very problem.

- [1]: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S221138352...

- [2]: https://www.recursion.com

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1. tomrod ◴[26 Apr 24 21:48 UTC] No.40174706[source]▶
Why do the phase testing not prevent overindexing failed projects?