30 March 2016 - When it comes to pharmaceutical companies, two accusations crop up time and again. One is that they charge too much for drugs and the other is that they focus research on diseases they can profit from. That means they concentrate on chronic diseases, rather than less profitable infectious ones.

“If you make a drug for diabetes, the patient has to take that drug once a day for the rest of their lives. What you’re trying to do with an infectious disease is cure it within three to five days, so your treatment has to be short and cheap,” explains Simon Croft, professor of parasitology at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

Pharma companies reply that drug development is highly resource-intensive and expensive. Drugs typically take 12 years from the initial discovery stage to reach the market, and while estimates of costs vary, the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry puts it at £1.15bn per drug.

For more details, go to: http://www.theguardian.com/healthcare-network/2016/mar/30/new-drugs-development-costs-pharma