Drug companies spending twice as much on research as federal government

A new government report says that new drug development is slowing, despite massive increases in research and development by pharmaceutical and biotech companies.

[A]nnual research and development spending by the pharmaceutical industry increased 147 percent, to $60 billion, between 1993 and 2004. At the same time, the number of new drug applications to the Food and Drug Administration grew by only 38 percent, and it generally has declined since 1999.

By way of comparison, the federal government invests about half that--$30 billion--on biomedical research annually (and only about $6 million of that federal funding goes to psoriasis research).

Different people will draw different conclusions from this report, but for us it is a reminder that drug development is costly, high-risk and difficult. We're just grateful that even in this challenging environment, new psoriasis therapies have been reaching patients in recent years.