Pfizer Public Policy: Research and Development

Pfizer invests more in pharmaceutical research than any other private institution in the world.¹

This research is aimed at a single goal: to develop new medicines that will enable people to lead healthier, longer and more productive lives.

Key Points

• The discovery of new drugs and their development into useful pharmaceuticals is central to the concept of medical progress. The U.S. pharmaceutical and biotech industries invested nearly $39 billion in research and development in 2004, with Pfizer leading the way with $7.7 billion and 12,500 scientists. ^2,3
• Only a small percentage of the medicines that Pfizer invests time, money and resources on makes it through the entire development process to market. Despite the risk, we continue to strive to discover innovative ways to improve the health of people here in the United States and around the world.
• The ability of the pharmaceutical industry to continue to invest in research is dependent on a public policy environment that encourages innovation. New laws affecting the pharmaceutical industry by restricting access to new products or establishing price controls would have the effect of lowering the research investment and thereby retarding the development of new and better products to treat currently untreatable diseases.

The process of taking an untested chemical and turning it into an approved medicine is a long and uncertain journey. On average it takes 12 to 15 years and between $800 million and $1.7 billion to bring a medicine to market.^4,5 Hundreds of Pfizer scientists, engineers, and physicians painstakingly test and further develop a new drug. However, even after the investment is made, there's no guarantee a new drug will make it through the rigorous clinical trial process and U.S Food and Drug Administration (FDA) review process. In fact, as shown in Chart 1, only one in five medicines that enter clinical trials testing in humans is eventually approved for patient use by the FDA.⁶ That's part of the risk involved in Pfizer's business of seeking out new and innovative health solutions. Learn More About Drug Discovery and Development Process

This commitment to research is characteristic of the U.S. pharmaceutical industry, whose companies in 2004 spent about $39 billion on research and development, more than the entire budget of the National Institutes of Health, only a fraction of which goes to drug discovery. As shown in Chart 2, the pharmaceutical industry is one of the most research-intensive industries in the United States. It may surprise you to learn that more than 90 percent of new drugs emanate from the laboratories of the pharmaceutical industry, as shown in Chart 3.

Our hope is that through our research we will advance medical care substantially to extend life and enhance the quality of life. In 1900, the life expectancy at birth in the United States was 49; today it is 77 and is lengthening due to advances in medical research.⁷

The U.S. pharmaceutical industry's ability to maintain world-wide leadership in medical advancements is directly dependent on a public policy environment that understands, supports and encourages innovation. In countries where government policies impose price controls on pharmaceuticals or restrict the availability of new prescription drugs, medical research is limited or non-existent. U.S. policymakers have demonstrated time and again that they understand the relationship between public policy and innovation and have demonstrated appropriate constraint in enacting new laws affecting pharmaceuticals.

¹The Department of Trade and Industry (U.K.) The 2005 R&D Scoreboard. Page 96. Available at: http://www.innovation.gov.uk/rd_scoreboard/. Accessed on Oct. 26, 2005.

² PhRMA. Press Release. Feb. 18, 2005.

³Pfizer 2004 Annual Report. Available at:http://www.pfizer.com/investors/financial_report_2004.jsp Accessed on Oct. 26, 2005. Also see Pfizer.com Research and Development Web site, available at:http://www.pfizer.com/research/

⁴Tufts Center for the Study of Drug Development. Backgrounder: How New Drugs Move Through the Development and Approval Process. Available at: http://csdd.tufts.edu/NewsEvents/RecentNews.asp?newsid=4. Accessed on Oct. 26, 2005.

⁵Landers P. Cost of Developing a New Drug Increases to About $1.7 Billion. The Wall Street Journal. Dec. 8, 2003.

⁶Stanford Medical School's Academic Consortium for Clinical Excellence in Scientific Studies. Clinical Trials FAQ. Accessed on Oct. 26, 2005.

⁷National Center for Health Statistics. Fast Stats A-Z. Life Expectancy tables, table 11. Available at: http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr53/nvsr53_06.pdf. Accessed on Oct. 26, 2005.

In This Section

Drug Discovery and Development Process

Learn more about the drug discovery and development process.

• Visit Drug Discovery and Development Process

Last Updated September 2007