America’s biopharmaceutical industry is central to diverse R&D ecosystem

America’s biopharmaceutical companies are at the heart of a robust research and development (R&D) ecosystem that supports continued medical advances for patients. This includes small and large biopharmaceutical companies, academic researchers, government agencies, non-profit patient groups, clinical trial centers, health care providers, investors and of course patients.

Eli Lilly and Company’s chief medical officer, Dr. Tim Garnett, recently expanded on the U.S. R&D ecosystem in a new PhRMA video. 

While government agencies like the National Institutes of Health and academic institutions  conduct important basic research to help understand diseases and how they may be effectively treated, Dr. Garnett underscores that the translational research required to develop innovative, lifesaving medicines for patients is the sole focus of the biopharmaceutical industry. PhRMA member companies invested more than $51 billion in R&D in 2014. In fact, the biopharmaceutical industry accounts for approximately 20 percent of all domestic R&D funding by U.S. businesses, supporting millions of jobs across the country. As a result of these investments, 7,000 new medicines are being developed around the world by biopharmaceutical companies, 70 percent of which are potential first-in-class therapies.

Dr. Garnett also underscores the dedication of researchers and scientists in the face of an extremely complex development process where setbacks are more common than successes, with just 12 percent of medicines making it from clinical trials to patients. Furthermore, this process takes 10 to 15 years and an average expenditure of $2.6 billion to bring a medicine to patients.

Despite these risks and challenges, America's biopharmaceutical companies are tireless in their pursuit of discovering new innovative medicines to improve the lives of patients.

View more videos from scientists and researchers at America’s biopharmaceutical companies here.