Opening up drug development to everyone

Abstract

Effective drug therapies are a cornerstone of medical practice. The path from drug discovery to approval is expensive and commonly associated with failure. The cost of drug development exceeds 800 million dollars per product. Late failure due to lack of clinical efficacy is a common cause of high costs. Recent attempts to improve the process of drug development involve the formation of public–private partnerships, which are facilitating the creation of new collaborations among corporate and nonprofit entities to find solutions that will accelerate innovative drug discovery.