Pharma Blog Watch

Congressional Report on R&D Spending (Eye on FDA)
In his blog, Mark Senak summarizes a Congressional Budget Office report titled "Research and Development in the Pharmaceutical Industry," which "covers trends in R&D spending and output, the costs associated with developing a drug, whether or not federal spending actually stimulates drug development and examines whether the innovative performance of the drug industry has declined."

"The report sheds light on just how complicated the pharmaceutical industry really is and one reason for that complexity is [the] intensive effort that has to be made in R&D and the length of time it takes to achieve success," he writes. "Another complex aspect addressed is the fact that since 1990, the investment in research and development has skyrocketed. But the output of [new molecular entities] has declined. Does that signal a failure?"