The Cost of Producing a drug

Have you ever asked yourself how much it costs to produce a drug?

People tend to think that producing a drug can only take hours if scientists work on it but this view is just so wrong. The cost of producing a drug is approximately 2-11 billion dollars(Aaron E Carroll, The New Health Care posted on Nov 18th 2014). This cost is calculated from the tedious procedure any pharmaceutical company has to undergo to produce a single drug.

The process itself takes about 10-12 years. In these years; there are specific factors the researcher has to experiment with his/her drug to prevent any setback when the drug is introduced to pharmaceuticals. Some of these factors are:

• The drug has to be non-toxic and should not have any side effects to the patient.
• The drug should be selective to target the area of interest.
• The drug should be mostly orally absorbed for it to reach the brain efficiently to act effectively
• The geographical origin may also be confirmed because it does affect the effectiveness of a drug
• The drug should be stable by being able to be stored for long without expiring.

After the researcher tests for this factors, he/she may need 10 compounds of which only one will become a drug. Failing at the end can be a very big blow and loss of a lot of dollars.

This costs and tedious procedures has since discouraged scientist from being innovative and actively trying to discover anything. I hope you learnt a thing or two from this article.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/19/upshot/calculating-the-real-costs-of-developing-a-new-drug.html?_r=0

Expery.