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Comment by 09bjb | Hacker News Reader

Welcome to pharmaceuticals in general (and many of the biggest biotech companies, come to think of it). I didn't find the exact number in a cursory search, but I've read that a fairly preposterous proportion of the drugs that have ever been produced are (unpatentable) plant molecules that were deliberately reverse-engineered and tweaked for patentability.

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The list of drugs that have been derived from plant sources is actually quite low.

And just because it’s present in a plant doesn’t mean it can be drugged. It could have a short half life, high toxicity, etc., so derivatives are made to optimize it’s action.

Finally, even if a patent can’t be secured, the first version of a drug is given exclusivity by the FDA - they won’t approve another version up to 7 years (orphan drugs).

I'd be interested in seeing data on that, as I have never heard that argument

A cursory look at the top selling drugs of all time doesn't appear to show any plant derived drugs [0]. Obviously this does not disprove your statement but its the quickest heuristic i could think of

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_selling_pharma...

That list is sorted by price; i.e., it will bias towards recent patents on complicated drugs.

OP's statement was about sheer number of patented drugs. I don't know that OP's statement was accurate, but the wikipedia link doesn't really refute or confirm the idea.

It’s a sad joke. If the gov’t wants to fix drug prices then figure out how to stop companies from gaming the system like this.

It could either bring drugs to market itself, negotiate for all consumers (single payer), or loosen FDA regulations around drug safety or efficacy trials. The status quo is that selling a drug is extremely expensive even when if you know a priori it is safe and effective, so companies must use the patent to seek high rents to recoup their costs (as well as cover R&D on other drugs, which may not pan out).

Yet prices are sufficiently high that it is a surprisingly profitable industry. It is also worth bearing in mind that the government find a large share of drug development. [1]

[1] "pharmaceutical and biotechnology sales revenue increased from $534 billion to $775 billion between 2006 and 2015.... Drug industry spending for research and development increased from $82 billion in 2008 to $89 billion in 2014" (I assume there are other costs so one cannot simply divide to get gross profit but it seems illustrative)

https://www.gao.gov/mobile/products/GAO-18-40

Analyses like that are misleading because most of the industry's revenues and profits are concentrated with a few firms. The vast majority of biotech and pharma companies are not profitable and never aim to become profitable -- rather they just do r&d and then sell drugs to big pharma once some of the clinical risk is taken out

In 2018 only like 12% of new FDA approved drugs were developed by big pharma. 63% were developed by small companies. A negligible amount were discovered by universities alone

Pharma acquired these drugs from startups through M&A which doesn't show up in profit and loss statements. It shows up on the balance sheet

That $84B r&d figure seems very low. The top 15 pharma companies spend something like $75B a year in r&d. VC backed startups spend like $10-15B. Then all the firms in between account for the majority of spending. Don't remember the source but I think total global pharma r&d is like $200B

The pharmaceutical industry inflates costs of drug development.

https://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/19/upshot/calculating-the-re...

The costs may be inflated but the actual costs are probably not that different than tufts. Several other studies suggest pharma is getting a return on its r&d investment of under 5% (a Deloitte and McKinsey study as well as a Novartis one). Pharma is also cutting internal r&d because they can't get a return. They buy drugs from startups instead which does not show up in the profit and loss statements

In 2018 only like 12% of new FDA approved drugs were developed by big pharma. 63% were developed by small companies. A negligible amount / zero were developed by universities

The $161M figure cited in that nytimes study is not at all representative because most early stage r&d is done outside of big pharma, and then big pharma buys the drugs and markets them

If drug research was profitable pharma would be doing more of it, not less

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