Drug development is highly resource-intensive and expensive with only one in 5000 medicines making it to the market – this is how it worksWhen it comes to pharmaceutical companies,two accusations crop up time and again. One is that they charge too much for drugs and the other is that they focus research on diseases they can profit from. That means they concentrate on chronic diseases, rather than less profitable infectious ones. “whether you make a drug for diabetes, and the patient has to take that drug once a day for the rest of their lives. What you’re trying to effect with an infectious disease is cure it within three to five days,so your treatment has to be short and cheap,” explains Simon Croft, or professor of parasitology at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.
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Source: theguardian.com