Up­dat­ed: Does R&D spend link to fi­nal mar­ket price? Aca­d­e­mics say 'no' in new pa­per

Re­searchers tried and failed to find a link be­tween drug R&D costs and fi­nal prices, even as many com­pa­nies claim that new ther­a­pies need to be priced high to re­coup the cost of their de­vel­op­ment.

A group of aca­d­e­mics from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Pitts­burgh, the UK and else­where scoured FDA and health data­bas­es, ex­am­in­ing 60 FDA-ap­proved drugs ap­proved be­tween Jan. 1, 2009 and the end of 2018. But the re­search was lim­it­ed by the few num­ber of drugs with da­ta avail­able on com­pa­ny R&D in­vest­ments.

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