Despite challenges, drug developers have reason to be optimistic, says Tufts

Despite a growing list of development challenges - including rising R&D costs, increasing regulatory stringency, and mounting public hostility over safety and end-user costs - drug firms have cause for optimism, according to the Tufts Center for the Study of Drug Development.

Contributing to that optimism, Tufts CSDD said, is the greater use of new technologies to reduce late-stage development failures and contain rising costs, increased reliance on global outsourcing to speed development and reduce costs, and more coordination between US and European regulators. The trends were cited in the Tufts Center's Outlook 2007 report on pharmaceutical and biotechnology development.

"While drug developers have understood that their long-term viability depends on improving R&D productivity - and have taken steps to address the issue - they're about to see their efforts pay off in terms of improved success rates and greater numbers of new medicinal products reaching the marketplace," commented Tufts CSDD director Kenneth Kaitin.