Why are Pharmaceutical Companies Turning to CROs?

CROs are helping to compensate for the pharmaceutical industry's lack of innovation. With a commitment to the highest performance standards, accuracy, and efficiency, many of them constantly develop and enhance technologies to provide sample analysis, assay validation, and lot release testing before manufacture.

FREMONT, CA: Over several decades, the CRO industry has evolved. It took shape in the mid-twentieth century with companies that supplied basic animal experimentation services. As regulatory frameworks arose in the 1970s and 1980s, contract research firms moved into clinical studies. There are presently over 1,000 CROs in operation, with only a few serving the global market.

It might take years to bring a drug product to market, from research through final drug approval. The average cost of developing a single new treatment is 2.6 billion dollars, including the cost of failures. The risk is substantial, given that only 12 percent of novel treatment candidates in clinical trials are ultimately approved by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Pharmaceutical companies are turning to contract research groups to:

Reduce Expenses: Outsourcing is primarily a risk-reduction approach. Profits at pharmaceutical businesses have fallen dramatically in recent years. Working with a CRO offers various advantages, including decreasing or eliminating the need to engage research workers, invest in in-house infrastructure for R&D and manufacturing, and manage an unclear success potential. It has the potential to improve success rates and speed up drug discovery and development, potentially leading to higher profitability.

Handle Drugs and Clinical Trials That Are Getting More Complex: Drug development has become more difficult due to advances in cell and gene therapies, antibody-drug conjugates, cytotoxic chemical products, and in vitro and in vivo processing procedures. CROs are helping to compensate for the pharmaceutical industry's lack of innovation. With a commitment to the highest performance standards, accuracy, and efficiency, many of them constantly develop and enhance technologies to provide sample analysis, assay validation, and lot release testing before manufacture.

Decrease Time to Market: CROs already have the skills and infrastructure in place to perform vital services more efficiently. They can make real-time changes to drug candidates depending on data received during clinical trials. As various complexities are addressed at every step of development by an organization built on services that address these, shorter lead times allow pharmaceutical enterprises to realize a return on their products much sooner.