"No Alternative" To Profit As Drug Discovery Engine

There is no alternative to profit as the engine for drug discovery, andit is improbable that a company will make a profit from a drug unless it provides geneuine patient benefit, according to Nic Holladay, managing director of Roche Products Ltd.

Speaking in London last week at a conference organized by the Drug and Therapeutics Bulletin to discuss dilemmas in prescribing and the provision of health, he said that the system we have today is the only one that works; university and government research would not be able to fill the gap if industry research disappeared, even though it is widely believed by the public that the government and universities produce more new drugs than the industry does.

Mr Holladay said the real dilemma today is patient welfare vs ability to pay. Innovation often means treating conditions which are being treated poorly or not at all, which means additive costs for payers. The issues today are: - matching resources to demand; - the need for new thinking on funding; - the need to get away from the narrow focus on drug costs, which represent only 10% of total National Health Service spending; - the low appreciation of the value of medicines; - the need for a greater appreciation of the global nature of the business; and - the fact that UK patients are not involved in the debate.