A Therapeutic and Economic Comparison of the Top Innovative New Drugs of the 1970s and 1980s

Abstract

The economically most important drugs introduced in the US in the 1980s represented distinct therapeutic advances over those of the 1970s. However, most recently, the strong post- World War II technological leadership of US based companies is clearly being challenged. Of the top 36 new chemical entities (NCEs) approved and marketed in the US in the 1980s, US based companies received a significantly smaller market share than they did for those NCEs approved in the 1970s, while during the same period, foreign based companies more than doubled their share of NCEs in this critical portion of the US market. Furthermore, discoveries of top drugs by US based companies decreased even more markedly from the 1970s to the 1980s. US based companies were able to continue to maintain their dominance in the upper end of the US market in the 1980s only by licensing more drugs from foreign sources. A cohesive set of national policies is needed to assure strong US leadership through the 1990s.