Who Discovers New Drugs?

 It's not just a matter of wanting to give lots of money to those nice drug companies. It's a matter of improving health care over the long term.

Who Discovers New Drugs?

via John Goodman's Health Policy Blog by Linda Gorman on 11/9/10

 

From 1997 to 2005 252 drugs were approved by the FDA. In a summary of a paper in Nature Reviews Drug Discovery, Derek Lowe (In the Pipeline blog) summarizes where most of the drug discoveries come from:

• 58% from pharmaceutical companies
• 18% from biotech companies
• 16% from universities, transferred to biotech
• 8% from universities, transferred to pharma.

Dr. Lowe notes that it is good to have some "numbers to point to I next run into someone who tries to tell me that all drugs are found with NIH grants, and that drug companies hardly do any research. (I know that this sounds like the most ridiculous strawman, but believe me, there are people – who regard themselves as intelligent and informed – who believe this passionately, in nearly those exact words)."