Phar­ma R&D spend­ing in the US more than dou­bles in a decade, PhRMA sur­vey finds

While PhRMA is en­gaged in a fierce bat­tle on Capi­tol Hill over new Medicare drug price ne­go­ti­a­tions, which the top phar­ma in­dus­try lob­by ar­gues will take a big cut on in­no­va­tion, the group al­so un­veiled a new re­port find­ing its mem­ber com­pa­nies have spent more than dou­ble on US R&D in 2021 (al­most $80 bil­lion) when com­pared to 2012 ($37 bil­lion).

But that dou­bling in US R&D spend­ing, as well as a dou­bling of world­wide R&D spend­ing in 2021 ($102 bil­lion) when com­pared to 2013 ($51 bil­lion), has not re­sult­ed in a cor­re­spond­ing uptick in new mol­e­c­u­lar en­ti­ty (NME) ap­provals — re­flect­ing both how dif­fi­cult it is to dis­cov­er new, mean­ing­ful drugs, and how the process is get­ting more ex­pen­sive over time.

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