STAT Plus: Clinical trial costs to develop a new drug may actually be rather modest — or so one study suggests
For years, the pharmaceutical industry has maintained that the costs to develop medicines accounts for rising prices. But a new analysis contends that expenses for at least one crucial component of drug development — the clinical trials — are actually modest.
After examining 101 new medicines that were approved by the Food and Drug Administration from 2015 through 2017, researchers found a median cost for clinical trials of $48 million per drug, with costs ranging from $20 million to $102 million. The 225 pivotal trials used to support approvals had a median cost of $19 million, or roughly $41,400 per patient, according to the analysis, which was published in BMJ Open.
