Genome-Based Therapeutics: Targeted Drug Discovery and Development. Workshop Summary. Held on March 12, 2012.

摘要

The number of new drug approvals has remained reasonably steady for the past 50 years at around 20 to 30 per year (Munos, 2009), while at the same time the total spending on health-related research and development has tripled since 1990 (Scannell et al., 2012). There are many suspected causes for this trend, including increased regulatory barriers, the rising costs of scientific inquiry, a decrease in research and development efficiency, the downstream effects of patent expirations on investment, and the lack of production models that have successfully incorporated new technology. Regardless, this trajectory is not economically sustainable for the businesses involved, and, in response, many companies are turning toward collaborative models of drug development, whether with other industrial firms, academia, or government (IOM, 2011). Introducing greater efficiency and knowledge into these new models and aligning incentives among participants may help to reverse the trends highlighted above, while producing more effective drugs in the process.