3 ms·

> Empirically, about 90% of the compounds that start at that first level fail to make it to the last level That would be an incredible rate of success, dependi

> Empirically, about 90% of the compounds that start at that first level fail to make it to the last level That would be an incredible rate of success, depending on what 'first level' means. If you mean "reached human clinical trials", maybe, but dunno. > It also seems that academia is not any better than pharmaceuticals at either developing the first step or pushing something to the end. "it also seems" lacks rigour, but let that pass for now. If academia develops 85% of the drugs that are released (I'll try to find a source for that, it's from memory) then the vast majority of failure costs (85% of them) are soaked up by the taxpayer. The few that are bought up by the drugs companies, are then sold privately. Very profitable. "According to BBC News, in 2013 pharmaceutical companies enjoyed higher average profit margins than carmakers, oil and gas companies and media companies. Only banks had a profit margin comparable to Big Pharma, but Pfizer’s 42% profit margin blew every other company out of the water, prompting even a member of its own industry to say, “I wouldn’t be able to justify [those types of margins].” In 2013, five pharmaceutical companies exceeded 20% profit margins: Pfizer, Hoffman-LaRoche, AbbVie, GSK and Eli Lilly." from https://www.andruswagstaff.com/blog/big-pharma-has-higher-profit-margins-than-any-other-industry/ https://www.andruswagstaff.com/blog/big-pharma-has-higher-pr...

aaavl2821 7y ago
Nearly 100% of new FDA approved drugs are developed by for profit companies. I don't know of a single case where a drug came directly from academia without another entity spending tens of millions on high risk r&d [0] It is misleading to say that the pharma industry is hugely profitable because 5 companies have high profit margins. There are thousands of pharma companies. Most will never make a profit -- they just do research. Most of these fail, the ones that succeed sell their drugs to those big pharma companies bc they can't commercialize them on their own. [0] https://troutaccess.com/index.php/snippets/details/hash/172043da53a7a847741ded09c5430d96 https://troutaccess.com/index.php/snippets/details/hash/1720...
refurb 7y ago
Are you surprised that the biggest (i.e. most successful drug companies) have the highest profit margins? What about all the companies that no longer exist because their drug failed and they went bankrupt? It's disingenuous to limit your analysis of profit to the most successful companies.
- tempguy9999 7y ago
  > Are you surprised that the biggest (i.e. most successful drug companies) have the highest profit margins? Not remotely surprised, because you're misrepresenting my quote. That's not what it said. Read it again.

aaavl2821 7y ago

Nearly 100% of new FDA approved drugs are developed by for profit companies. I don't know of a single case where a drug came directly from academia without another entity spending tens of millions on high risk r&d [0] It is misleading to say that the pharma industry is hugely profitable because 5 companies have high profit margins. There are thousands of pharma companies. Most will never make a profit -- they just do research. Most of these fail, the ones that succeed sell their drugs to those big pharma companies bc they can't commercialize them on their own. [0] https://troutaccess.com/index.php/snippets/details/hash/172043da53a7a847741ded09c5430d96 https://troutaccess.com/index.php/snippets/details/hash/1720...

refurb 7y ago

Are you surprised that the biggest (i.e. most successful drug companies) have the highest profit margins? What about all the companies that no longer exist because their drug failed and they went bankrupt? It's disingenuous to limit your analysis of profit to the most successful companies.

tempguy9999 7y ago
> Are you surprised that the biggest (i.e. most successful drug companies) have the highest profit margins? Not remotely surprised, because you're misrepresenting my quote. That's not what it said. Read it again.