Does anyone have any figures on approximate cost to market for development of a biological drug? How much more does it cost than a small molecule and where are the bulk of additional costs? Any advice appreciated.
I've seen figures ranging from $500m up to $2bn quoted in various sources and would suspect biologics to be nearer the top end of this due to higher manufacturing costs.
It also depends whether you are talking standalone cost or whether you include the cost of those that don't make it to market.....not an easy one to quantify.
Yeah, most figures I have seen include the failure cost of dropout developments. I'm really looking for a standalone number as I'd rather use my own success-failure rate overall.
Working in a biotech, I like to use a slightly better success rate than big pharma....
In the truest sense of Biotech, biological products historically have shown a higher success rate, but largely because the first ones were recombination versions of existing therapies.
Hi everyone,
Had a quick look using our friend Google and can see the problems here. As soon as you mention the words cost and biological in the search the first 50 million entries relate to how expensive treatments are, rather than development cost.
I am guessing some of the finance houses would have a sense for this, will see if I can get someone on the site.
Still interested to hear if anyone has any numbers here?
I came across the following statement at http://www.natap.org...pdates/100109_06.htm:
"the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA) puts development costs for biologics at $1.2 billion, close to that for conventional drugs at $1.318 billion"
So, PhRMA estimates biological drugs are actually less costly to develop, perhaps because the patient populations involved in trials for more niche areas (more likely with biologics) are smaller and therefore trial costs are lower?
Seems a little odd. I'm sure I've seen figures quoting much higher manufacture costs for biologics....
ay1978 said
Seems a little odd. I'm sure I've seen figures quoting much higher manufacture costs for biologics....
Not when you bring the emerging markets into the frame. A lot of these countries have been very savvy about seeing the opportunity here.
dave said
ay1978 said
Seems a little odd. I'm sure I've seen figures quoting much higher manufacture costs for biologics....Not when you bring the emerging markets into the frame. A lot of these countries have been very savvy about seeing the opportunity here.
Then that would bring down costs in the same way for small molecules so they would still be cheaper! Anyway, I'm not sure there are that many facilities in emerging markets for biologicals from what I've seen.
Keep watching, they are springing up everywhere!
As big pharma moves into biogenerics (which may are starting to do) expect costs of production for biologics to go down. I've not seen any recent absolute figures though.
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