New study sug­gests it costs $1.3B in R&D in­vest­ment to bring a drug to mar­ket. How did it get there?

Politi­cians, pun­dits and pa­tient groups now have a new num­ber at their dis­pos­al when drug­mak­ers cite high R&D costs — as much as $2.8 bil­lion in cur­rent dol­lars — to jus­ti­fy their pric­ing de­ci­sions: $1.3 bil­lion in mean in­vest­ment to bring a drug to mar­ket.

The es­ti­mat­ed mean cost is the cen­tral find­ing re­port­ed in a new JA­MA study, which set out to ob­tain its own an­swer to the long-run­ning de­bate of how much it costs to get a ther­a­py to pa­tients. But the fig­ure doesn’t cap­ture the range of costs bro­ken by ther­a­peu­tic area, which can range from $765.9 mil­lion for ner­vous sys­tem drugs to $2.77 bil­lion for can­cer and im­munol­o­gy treat­ments.

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