The Tufts Center for the Study of Drug Development is an independent, academic, non-profit research center at

Tufts University Tufts University is a private research university on the border of Medford and Somerville, Massachusetts. It was founded in 1852 as Tufts College by Christian universalists who sought to provide a nonsectarian institution of higher learning. ...

Boston Boston (), officially the City of Boston, is the state capital and most populous city of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as well as the cultural and financial center of the New England region of the United States. It is the 24th- mo ...

, dedicated to researching

drug development Drug development is the process of bringing a new pharmaceutical drug to the market once a lead compound has been identified through the process of drug discovery. It includes preclinical research on microorganisms and animals, filing for re ...

. It was established in 1976 by American physician

Louis Lasagna Louis Cesare Lasagna (February 22, 1923 – August 6, 2003) was an American physician and professor of medicine, known for his revision of the Hippocratic Oath. Early life and education Lasagna was an internationally recognized and respected e ...

. The Center develops and publishes information to help researchers, regulators, and policy makers in areas related to the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries. In any given year, approximately 55% of Tufts CSDD's operating expenses are supported by grants from the private sector and 45% from the public sector.

Research

The Center studies trends in the pharmaceutical industry, maintaining databases pertaining to investigational new drugs, approved drugs,

biopharmaceutical A biopharmaceutical, also known as a biological medical product, or biologic, is any pharmaceutical drug product manufactured in, extracted from, or semisynthesized from biological sources. Different from totally synthesized pharmaceuticals, t ...

s, fast-tracked drugs, and orphan drugs. The Center provides this information with the aim to improve the efficiency of drug development, foster innovation, and increase patient access to medicines.

Drug development costs

The center has published numerous studies estimating the cost of developing new

pharmaceutical drug A medication (also called medicament, medicine, pharmaceutical drug, medicinal drug or simply drug) is a drug used to diagnose, cure, treat, or prevent disease. Drug therapy (pharmacotherapy) is an important part of the medical field an ...

s. In 2001, researchers from the Center estimated that the cost of doing so was $802 million, and in 2014, they released a study estimating that this amount had risen to nearly $2.6 billion. The 2014 study was criticized by Medecins Sans Frontieres, which said it was unreliable because the industry's research and development spending is not made public. Aaron Carroll of the ''New York Times'' also criticized the study, saying it "contains a lot of assumptions that tend to favor the pharmaceutical industry." The center's 2016 estimate, published in the ''

Journal of Health Economics The ''Journal of Health Economics'' is a peer-reviewed academic journal that publishes articles about health economics and related fields concerning human health care and medicine. The journal is published six times annually by Elsevier. The ed ...

'', found the cost to have averaged $2.87 billion (in 2013 dollars).

References

{{Authority control Tufts University 1976 establishments in Massachusetts Non-profit organizations based in Boston Organizations established in 1976 Drug discovery