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The Business of Developing New Drugs

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Submitted By larrycephas
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The Business of Developing New Drugs for Cancer
Larry Cephas
Strayer University

Developing new drugs for cancer and or any other medical purpose is a tedious, complex, expensive process. The process in developing new drugs involves numerous stages of trial and error. According to Mahajan and Gupta (2010) on average it can cost anywhere from US$ 802million to US$ 1billion dollars to successfully develop and market new drugs and, that process can take up to 12years with on average of only 8% of them ever hitting the market. From the beginning of civilization, people have been concerned regarding the quality and safety of medicines, which I do not fault anyone because, some medicines just do not work out to be very effected and good for the human body. My purpose of this white paper is to inform you and outline the various steps and procedures that goes into developing these new drugs for cancer, the economic issues people with face today, the special needs being served and the benefits of these new drugs and methods of how they are being developed, and finally based on my research the end result once these newly developed drugs reach the consumers.
The Development of New Drugs
The steps involved in developing new drugs for cancer patients are very complex (Figure 1). According to a fact sheet released by the California Biomedical Research Association there are several steps taken when developing a new drug. The first step involved is the preclinical research, in which scientist and researchers determine what germs, viruses, or bacteria causes a specific disease. Once this has been accomplished, both the scientist and the researchers begin to work on breaking down the different components that create the disease to find out what abnormalities are taking place within the body. After that has been determined they then come up with a drug that they believe that will

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