It’s still true that drug development can take years, but compared to how things used to work? Things are noticeably improved. It wasn’t so long ago that drug development would take anywhere from 10 – 15 years before it was ready for market, and cost billions of dollars to boost, too.

Today, the process is speeding up significantly. What might have taken more than a decade is now taking a few years, and with AI in medicine ever-improving, there’s hope that timelines will come down even further still.

This isn’t by accident. While artificial intelligence gets most of the headlines, there are many other reasons why drug development is getting faster and faster. In this post, we’ll run through some of the most influential factors that are ensuring drugs can reach the market faster than ever. 

Increased Collaboration

It’s much easier to get work done when you have access to the all-important information you need. In the past, access to that information wasn’t always possible. Instead of accessing data from other companies, most pharma companies had to conduct their own time-consuming and expensive research.

Today, there’s a growing trend of collaboration among pharma companies, which are much more willing to share non-competitive knowledge. In addition, regulators are also engaging with pharma companies at a much earlier stage of the drug development cycle, increasing the likelihood that any potential problems that could slow down time to market are caught early. 

Better Analytical Services

Drug development testing is a vital part of the process, but in the past, pharma companies had to rely on inefficient testing tools that would only give minimal information about the product. In recent years, improved analytical services, such as analytical support for impurity profiling in biologics, have helped to significantly speed up turnaround time without sacrificing data quality. These services effectively allow drug development labs to do more, more quickly, without worrying that they’re cutting corners somewhere. 

Lessons From COVID

It’s often underestimated just how much of an impact the development of the COVID-19 vaccine had on the drug development industry. Before the pandemic, it was assumed that the only way to develop drugs was by going from one stage to the next in a uniform manner. The development of the COVID-19 vaccine showed that it was possible for development stages to occur simultaneously without sacrificing safety standards. Since COVID-19, the industry has reimagined what the drug development process can look like. 

Greater Investment

As with COVID-19, it’s also often underestimated just how much of an impact the inflow of investment money has had on the drug development industry. In the past, pharma companies were limited by scientific constraints, but they were also often limited by financial constraints too. In many cases, companies had to make sure that one stage of the development process had been successful before they could access the funding required for the next stage. Today, an increase in investment means businesses can plan and execute the journey more quickly, and there’s also a competitive pressure to get to market first, too.