The pharmaceutical industry is experiencing a serious innovation deficit.
It’s not all the industry’s fault. After all, it’s very difficult to discover a new drug. Finding one that deals with the various causes and conditions associated with chronic diseases like diabetes, heart disease, cancer and Alzheimer’s a is a huge challenge.
So the industry strives for important, if incremental, progress: e.g., eradication of acute infectious diseases and duodenal ulcers, increased survival rates for blood and lymph cancers, reduced incidence of coronary heart disease through use of statins.
What more can be done? What’s needed is a system that fosters exploration and development of new and important scientific observations.
The truth is that we can no longer rely on large organizations with thousands of scientists who have little room for creativity and serendipity among their ranks. While the National Institutes of Health is an excellent organization, its scientists often lack the knowledge of the drug development process to push a new drug idea forward. More and more universities are involved in biotech start-ups, but only few have the wherewithal to pull it off. Nor can we rely on investors to provide biotech funding in these difficult economic times.
Here is where government should step in with vigor. I suggest a “500 new drug ideas” initiative through NIH in which 500 start-up companies are granted $1 million each for drug development.
This is exactly the type of effort needed to foster innovation, allowing plenty of room for serendipity to kick in. The initiative would also create thousands of jobs with a relatively modest investment. Furthermore, many potential cures, now languishing in under-funded start-ups, might have a chance to see the light of day.
We need only to get five new drugs (perhaps even fewer) out of this investment to make the initiative worthwhile. With large chunks of recent government spending going to failed or underperforming institutions, this combination of potentially winning drugs and economic benefit (i.e., jobs) is a no-brainer.
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If the average cost required to bring a drug to market is $800 million to $1 billion for a traditional product and $1-1.2 billion for a biologic product, how is a $1 million grant going to help a single start-up?
I assume that you don’t suggest that every start-up needs $800 million dollars to get going… a typical seed investment is $500k to $1 million. $1 million is enough to investigate basic animal pharmacology and feasibility of manufacturing, and in many cases could lead to data needed to raise more money. Incidentally, the $800+ million that everybody uses as the cost of developing new drug includes all the failures and waste that is common in many big companies, and is often spread over 10-15 years of development. But if you suggest that getting more than $1 million seed would be better, I would agree completely.