The report, compiled by the consulting and accounting firm Deloitte, paints a picture of an industry caught between rising R&D costs on one hand and falling average projected peak sales on the other.
According to Deloitte, the cost to usher a drug from discovery all the way through launch — an elusive and usually controversial figure — stabilized at a little over $1.5 billion this year. At the same time, forecast sales per asset have dropped steadily in recent years, leading to an erosion of the projected returns from late-stage pipelines.
