Bio/Pharmaceutical companies

Preposterous costs of Biotech / Pharmaceutical products

Introduction

Biotech / Pharmaceutical companies incur huge costs in brining a drug to the market . This details the process of drug development right from the stage of preclinical trials to the final stage when the drug gets FDA approval . The gives an insight about the costs incurred by the companies in the drug development process . Considering the specific example of Genentech 's controversial anti-cancer drug Avastin its cost is compared with the value it delivers to its customer (a person suffering from cancer

Drug development

is a very costly affair which involves high risks Though the risks in the process of drug development overweigh the benefits , the drug manufacturers are motivated to undertake such a process because of the current patent laws which promise a good reward for a comparatively good product . Moreover , the very survival of many of the pharmaceutical companies world over depend to a large extent on the new products coming out of their pipeline . Thus pharmaceutical companies world over invest billions of dollars every year in the development of new drugs . No doubt they try to get back the money that they invest from their customers

The success rate of developing a new drug is shockingly low . Not every drug tested in the laboratory is launched in the market . A drug has to undergo several stages of development before it is successfully launched in the market

A company has to screen through many thousand compounds that show promising result...