Developing a new drug is expensive and takes a number of years, the complexity of the disease and the size of clinical trials will have an impact on both.

Page last reviewed: 18/06/2018

Source: Cummings, J et al (2014). Alzheimer’s disease drug-development pipeline: few candidates, frequent failures Alzheimer’s Research & Therapy 2014 6:37

Source: CNS Drugs Take Longer to Develop and Have Lower Success Rates than Other Drugs by Tufts Center for the Study of Drug Development

Source: Participation in dementia  trials and studies: Challenges and recommendations. White Paper by Alzheimer’s Disease International (2014)

Source: CNS Drugs Take Longer to Develop and Have Lower Success Rates than Other Drugs by Tufts Center for the Study of Drug Development

Source: Marsden, G and Mestre-Ferrandiz, J. (2015). Dementia: the R&D Landscape by the Office of Health Economics

Time and cost of drug development

This graph shows the average length of time taken to reach approval from the start of the clinical trial phase. Alzheimer’s disease is a neurological condition and these drugs are included in the Central Nervous System (CNS) drugs category.

Source: Kaitin Kl et al. Pharmaceutical Innovation in the 21st Century: New Drug Approvals in the First Decade, 2000–2009 Clin Pharmacol Ther. 2011 Feb;89(2):183-8

Alzheimer’s disease is one of the more expensive conditions in terms of drug development.

Source: Mestre-Ferrandiz J et al (2012). The R&D Cost of a New Medicine by the Office of Health Economics

Success of drug development

Four unique drugs to treat Alzheimer’s disease have been produced which forms around 5-7% of the total number of drugs approved for neurological conditions. There is a clear difference between therapeutic areas and different decades, this is caused by a combination of scientific breakthroughs and shifts in public attention.

Source: Kaitin Kl et al. Pharmaceutical Innovation in the 21st Century: New Drug Approvals in the First Decade, 2000–2009 Clin Pharmacol Ther. 2011 Feb;89(2):183-8 and Kinch, M.S. (2014) An analysis of FDA-approved drugs for oncology. Drug Discovery Today; 19(12): 1831-5

This graph demonstrates the success rate for Alzheimer’s disease drug development. It shows the number of potential treatments it takes to get a single drug to market.

Source: Calcoen D et al (2015). What does it take to produce a breakthrough drug? Nat Rev Drug Discov. 14(3):161-2.