Well, here's an unwelcomed graph from the In the Pipeline blog. It depicts R&D productivity in the pharma industry from 1950 to present day in inflation adjusted dollars -- and shows NMEs per $billion R&D spend. Guess what?
The trend has never been anything but down, down, down. It's steady, predictable and inexorable. It would be great if we were talking costs or time to market but we're talking about productivity. Yikes! The reaction? For the first time in 2010, the Big Pharma industry saw an absolute drop in R&D spending. In 2010, about $68 B was spent as compared to $70 B in both 2008 and 2009.
It makes one wonder if all the talk about R&D models and new means of discovering drugs with academic or biotech partners can reasonably be expected to bear fruit -- at least in terms of higher efficiencies or productivity?
Posted by Bruce Lehr June 28th 2011.
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