Just don't go into the industry then; they don't develop any of their own drugs anyway. They prey on academic institutions (NIH funded researchers) and small start up companies while relying on technology transfer provisions put in place by the Bayh-Dole Act of 1980 to "develop" anything that could remotely be considered a new molecular entity. They basically wait for researchers to come up with truly innovative drugs, and then offer royalties for the rights to market the molecule. And they subsequently parade around claiming they spend all of their money coming up with these life saving medications, which clearly justifies raping Americans when it comes to the cost of drugs.
A lot of zeal, but unfortunately not based on deep understanding of the issue. You are parroting almost exactly an article that came out a couple weeks ago...
Give me ONE example of a drug brought into the market by the academia or a CRO (and there are plenty of those, since separation of labor has been proven as the most efficient way of labor organization well over a hundred years ago) in the recent years (warfarin is NOT recent). Anyone can come up with a number of patentable molecules. There are hundreds of them patented each week, by pharma research divisions, by CROs, by academia, by biotech, by private citizens. A computer program is what sorts out molecules, and it doesn't matter where that computer sits. Synthesizing that molecule may or may not be a difficult process, but again, it means very little in the long run, because there are thousands such molecules being synthesized every year. Even figuring out the most bioavailable form of that molecule, be it a salt, or a specific crystalline form may not matter. Because then what matters is
- can you formulate it? (and there are many great molecules with a lot of promise that never go anywhere simply because you cannot formulate them into an end product)
- will it replicate in humans its in-vitro or animal effects?
- will it be safe and effective when used in general population?
And there are other twists and turns along the way but these are the major ones. And if academia sometimes does go through questions one and two, they never go through large-scale human trials without industry sponsorship. First, because they haven't got the money (and it costs a lot...) and second, because they are risk averse, and it is very, very high risk proposal. Finally, they don't have the ability to take the drug through the approval process.
The reasons most new drugs are developed outside pharma are very simple.
- You have at most a few hundred scientists working on discovery stages in-house at any major pharma. That leaves thousands working outside of pharma.
- It is more efficient to outsource certain functions, and makes more sense fiscally. Hospitals do outsourcing to, for exact same reasons. Think about it. A lot of RnD companies on the market are research units spun off by pharma.
- There are organizations whose bread and butter is discovery/preclinical/maybe phase I depending on the company, and because that is what they focus on, they do it better. Also, there is efficiency and time saving in smaller scale with less cumbersome paperwork.
All that said, "preying" is an incorrect term simply because what comes from outside is early-stage and costs just a few millions, maybe $25-30 if they take it through phase I and early phase II before licensing it out - which is pennies on the total expense scale of developing a compound. And compounds coming from outside have as big a failure rate as those developed internally, you just don't hear about all the products that fail in phase I and II and early phase III. I do. And I have seen whole new drug classes fail after being trumped up as the next best thing.
There is mutually beneficial collaboration between big pharma and CROs, academically based or privately held, based on concepts from Microeconomics 101 (I thought residencies devoted a rotation specifically to management issues, which do rely on basic economics concepts?). It's rarely big pharma going to license something in - it usually the developers wanting to license something out who come in and sell themselves. Pharmaceutical industry world is a lot more complex than it seems, and I suggest doing more research and thinking it through before making blanket statements. Pharma industry is not perfect, nothing is - but your argument has no depth to it, and it is disappointing when people just spout off what they hear in the media without thinking about it.
