STAT’s Matthew Herper struck an industry nerve when he wrote that the drug development industry is “not prepared for the next wave of biotech innovation.”
His report ends on a somewhat dismal note: the industry is long on diagnosis (clinical development is too expensive) and short on cures.
For an industry based on science and evidence, a good way to understand a complex situation like this is to test different scenarios in a simple model. Building on prior work by others in the field, we created such a model to help inform the much-needed debate that Herper’s article kickstarted.
To be sure, “All models are wrong,” as George Box once mischievously said, “but some are useful.” We believe this is one of the useful ones, and we invite readers to explore its implications with us.
Recent events and biopharma productivity
The productivity of new-drug research and development is poor