Item — HN Reader

> The oft cited $2.6B cost to develop a drug is derived from data from big pharma drug development programs.

This number can not be validated as most of the information is not public. It's a self-reported number and should be treated as such.

https://www.reuters.com/article/pharmaceuticals-tufts/correc...

1 comments

I don't think that number is too crazy. I did my own back of the envelope analysis and got $1.5B in early stage r&d spend per approved drug discovered by big pharma. If you add a few hundred million for late stage r&d (big pharma spends about the same on late and early stage r&d) and then include cost of capital its in the ballpark of that number