The global drugs development market is now undergoing dramatic change. This change could open an outstanding window of opportunity for Israel’s life sciences market. The big drug companies are restructuring their ethical drug development operations. The development of an ethical drug costs around $1 billion, but even with higher investment in R&D, not enough molecules are coming onto the market. A decade ago, drug companies spent $25 billion on the development of new molecules in North America alone, and by 2006 this figure had more than doubled to $55 billion. Surprisingly, in 1996 the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved 53 molecules compared with 22 in 2006. Because of this anomaly, the rate of growth in ethical molecules now stands at just 2% a year.
