The great pharmaceutical-academic merger

Pharmaceutical companies are often lambasted for rising drug costs. For example, the price of new drugs entering the US market in 2023 was 35% higher than in 2022. According to an analysis from Reuters , part of the increase is due to a move to develop therapies for rare diseases: because fewer people have those condition, drugmakers push up the per-dose price to recover their costs. But the cost of developing drugs for more common diseases, including cancers , is also rising rapidly. In 2019, pharmaceutical companies spent $83 billion dollars on research and development. After accounting for inflation, that’s roughly 10 times what the industry spent in the 1980s, according to the US Congressional Budget Office. A 2024 study showed that the share of sales revenue devoted to research spending rose from 12% in 2008 to 18% in 2019, and drugmakers are beginning to feel the pinch. In addition