More salvo's in the battle over whether the "innovation crisis" in pharma is due to inherent difficulties and costs in bringing new drugs to market or whether it is caused by pharma companies choosing to pursue more "sure thing" me-too products.
The pharma shoots-too-low crowd, Donald Light from the University of Medicine of New Jersey and Joel Lexchin from York University in Toronto, opines in the most recent British Medical Journal that the situation has remained the same for 50 years. The incentives for drug development are wrong and have skewed the behaviour of the industry.
They claim more is spent on marketing (25 per cent of revenues) than on discovering new molecules (1.3 per cent). Drug industry claims that the cost of bringing a new drug to market is £1bn and is unsustainable are exaggerated, they claim. Research and development costs did rise substantially between 1995 and 2010 by $34.2bn (£21.9bn), they concluded, but revenues increased six times faster – by $200.4bn.
Towards Pharmageddon? The last (lost) decade .
They add that up to 80 per cent of drug spending is used by the industry on promotion. The authors call for licensing authorities around the world to stop approving new drugs of little therapeutic value. They suggest large cash prizes should be awarded for genuinely new therapeutic agents in lieu of patent protection.
In a second paper, researchers from the London School of Economics in the UK argue that drug manufacturers should be made to demonstrate that their products are superior to existing treatments before being granted a licence, rather than, as now, superior only to a placebo. In other words, comparative effectiveness should be used to justify adding new drugs to the approved menu.
With regard to magnitude of costs/profits, I believe the truth lies somewhere in between. Drugs do cost a lot to discover and bring to market. But drugmakers do spend on lot on marketing to justify me-too drugs -- and could channel some of this toward developing more novel therapies with better patient benefits.
I suspect we will see a coorection as more regulatory and 3rd party payer incentives are put in place toward getting novel drugs to treat unserved diseases. Economics is going to prevent us from continuing down the me-too route as these drugs increasingly will find it toughter to gain approval and to get reimbursement consideration.
Do we really need 17 beta blockers or just one new Alzheimer's drug that actually works?
Posted by Bruce Lehr Aug 8th 2012.
Comments