Big Pharma

Big Pharma is clearly at a crossroads

For two decades, healthcare has relied on Big Pharma to crank out wonder drugs to control our disease symptoms and risk factors. But progress has slowed—in some cases stalled.

» 7 of the 13 historic pharmaceutical companies had no new molecular entities (NMEs) approved in 2016.

» Even as the cost of developing a drug is rising, the odds of getting a drug from Phase 1 all the way to FDA approval have fallen below 10%.

» Those odds in oncology are only 5.1%, in cardiovascular only 6.6% and in neurology only 8.4%.

» As a result, financial returns across Big Pharma have steadily fallen over the current decade from 11% to 3.7%.

$154 billion is spent every year on drug research. That annual investment is in jeopardy if it doesn’t pay out. Already the R&D investment into antibiotics and vaccines has slowed to a trickle because of the lack of financial return.