BioCentury
ARTICLE | Politics & Policy

Tufts: Average drug development cost now $2.6B

November 19, 2014 3:34 AM UTC

The Tufts Center for the Study of Drug Development has concluded the average cost of developing an approved therapeutic has reached $2.6 billion. The figure, released on Tuesday, includes $1.4 billion in average out-of-pocket costs and $1.2 billion in opportunity costs, measured as the expected returns investors forego while a drug is in development.

Tufts' analysis relies on data on drugs that entered clinical testing between 1995 and 2007. The study was based on data for 106 randomly selected drugs provided by 10 pharmaceutical companies. ...