> The actual cost to develop a single successful drug, if you pass all the clinical trials, is in the ballpark of $500M or so. I'd love to see a source for tha

> The actual cost to develop a single successful drug, if you pass all the clinical trials, is in the ballpark of $500M or so. I'd love to see a source for that.. Not even Pharma claims figures that high. Take Sofosbuvir for example; It was discovered in 2007, was developed through 2011 and then the company was acquired by Gilead while they had multiple Phase III trials running. In that time period, they spent a total of $230 million on R&D -- for all of their candidates. They also had two other compounds that were undergoing Phase II trials. > The Phase III clinical trial by itself is well over $100M, much more if you're doing a large, long-term clinical study for a difficult problem (say, Alzheimer's or cancer). Nah. Not even close. HHS's most recent look placed Phase III at $19.9M, with very few classes of drugs costing more than $50M total for all phases (Ignoring IV since those are often more marketing than R&D)[1]: https://aspe.hhs.gov/system/files/images-reports/examination-clinical-trial-costs-and-barriers-drug-development/Figure%203.png https://aspe.hhs.gov/system/files/images-reports/examination... > Something like 50% of all drugs fail in phase III. The average is closer to 60% success rate, with some areas up to 75% success.[2] And it's not like if you fail the Phase III, the compound is scrapped and all of that work is wasted. There's an entire industry behind drug "repurposing, repositioning and rescue" to purchase and retarget promising compounds. [1] Full study: https://aspe.hhs.gov/report/examination-clinical-trial-costs-and-barriers-drug-development https://aspe.hhs.gov/report/examination-clinical-trial-costs... [2] https://www.bio.org/sites/default/files/Clinical%20Development%20Success%20Rates%202006-2015%20-%20BIO,%20Biomedtracker,%20Amplion%202016.pdf https://www.bio.org/sites/default/files/Clinical%20Developme...