The answer to stagnating R&D can be found in the creativity of the movie industry.
By Liam Bernal
The pharmaceutical industry should be a tangible demonstration of the value of the scientific enterprise. Enormous benefits to society should, and generally do, flow from a healthy pharma sector. The transformation of AIDS into a treatable chronic disease is an example of such a benefit.
However, despite inexorable progress in biologic research, there has been a perplexingly dismal return in the number of drugs that have been successfully developed and marketed in the last few years: The number of new drugs that the US Food & Drug Administration has approved has fallen by half since 1996, with only 20 approved in 2005. That was the second lowest number of approvals in the history of the agency. Failures in the last stage of clinical development, Phase III, are particularly excruciating. Phase III trials consume ...
