Out of 248 drugs approved by the FDA from 2008 to 2017 that contained one or more new molecular entities, 19 percent originated in publicly supported research and development. Six percent originated in companies that were spun off from a publicly supported research program.
The study also determined these drugs were 1.4 times more likely to receive expedited FDA approval reviews and 1.7 times more likely to be designated as a first-in-class treatment.
The findings support the idea that public sector financing and research bolsters a substantial portion of late-stage drug development, according to the authors.
“It turns out that U.S. taxpayers are the ones that are not only funding that upstream basic science research that make all drug discovery possible, but are actually funding the invention of a substantial portion of new drugs,” Rahul Nayak, MD, a physician at Boston-based Massachusetts General Hospital and a researcher at the Program on Regulation, Therapeutics and Law at Boston-based Brigham & Women’s Hospital, told STAT.
The study comes as debates over the rising cost of prescription drugs have prompted a variety of proposals from Congress and the Trump administration, including the idea that the federal government should ensure that medicines funded with taxpayer dollars are more affordable.
Read the full article here.
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