Tufts Center for the Study of Drug Development

The Center studies trends in the pharmaceutical industry, maintaining databases pertaining to investigational new drugs, approved drugs, biopharmaceuticals, fast-tracked drugs, and orphan drugs.^[4] The Center provides this information with the aim to improve the efficiency of drug development, foster innovation, and increase patient access to medicines.^[5]

The center has published numerous studies estimating the cost of developing new pharmaceutical drugs. In 2001, researchers from the Center estimated that the cost of doing so was $802 million,^[6] and in 2014, they released a study estimating that this amount had risen to nearly $2.6 billion.^[3] 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.^[7] 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."^[8] The center's 2016 estimate, published in the Journal of Health Economics, found the cost to have averaged $2.87 billion (in 2013 dollars).^[9]