Strong pharma research is key to bringing in investment

“Few people disagree that small drug discovery companies are vital to the health of the UK's pharma industry, and central to the government's aim of innovation-led growth. But private backers have become increasingly risk-averse," said Ana Nicholls, Healthcare Analyst at the Economist Intelligence Unit in response to an article in the UK’s Financial Times yesterday, titled Pioneering research on drugs is key to clinching investment.

“If the UK is to retain its historically strong role in drug discovery and development in the face of heavy cuts by big pharmaceutical companies such as Pfizer, it needs innovative small companies to come up with breakthroughs and new approaches,” wrote Chris Tighe and Andrew Bounds in the FT. Unlocking the potential of their knowledge base to build enterprises creating new drugs and ¬discovery techniques entails huge risks and investment, they said. Industry estimates of the average cost of bringing a drug to market have jumped in the past two decades from $150 million to $2 billion. The chances of an initial concept reaching licensed, commercial sale can be as little as one in 100,000 and can take 12 years, the FT journalists observed