4 ms·
One caveat to "big pharma finds cures" is that, to my understanding, a lot of the research is done via public institutions, big pharma just handles the manufact
by spondylosaurus 3y ago
One caveat to "big pharma finds cures" is that, to my understanding, a lot of the research is done via public institutions, big pharma just handles the manufacturing and distribution.
I know adalimumab's discovery was funded (at least in part) by government grants, but Humira still made AbbVie richer than god.
- sudosysgen 3y agoBig Pharma also often handles the clinical trials and approvals. I don't know if there is a mechanism for a public lab to get approval for a medicine? Probably if we found a way to drive down the cost of clinical trials, we'd be able to structure the system in a way to eliminate the middle-men here, but that's much easier said than done.
- spondylosaurus 3y agoAh, good point... are clinical trials expensive to run?
- sjducb 3y agoA couple of billion per drug.
- PeterisP 3y agoThey are a bit more than half of the total drug R&D costs, so they cost more than all the research, experimental synthesis and pre-clinical experiments combined. If you've discovered a drug which works in vitro and on animals, and want to start clinical trials, you're not even halfway done.