Bouncing Back From A Phase III Flop

Small Pharma’s Road To Recovery

The passing of a decade always brings with it an inevitable glance in the rear-view mirror to see how far we have come. The pharma industry is no different and it would be remiss to ignore the failings of the industry’s collective R&D engine while also celebrating its successes.

According to US industry body PhRMA, the average R&D cost of a bringing an FDA-approved drug to patients is around $2.6bn over the past decade, including the cost of the many medicines that do not make it through to approval.

The composite success rate of clinical development stages from Phase I trials to regulatory submission fell to 11.4% in 2018,...