Articles by Manfred E. Wolff

Most people in the drug discovery community have become familiar with what has been called “the obligatory graph”—a comparison showing a continual increase in R&D investment by the pharmaceutical industry coupled with a disappointingly low production of approved new molecular entities (NMEs). In fact, in 2005, only 18 NMEs were approved by the FDA, the second lowest count in the past decade. Concomitant with this shortfall is a rising tide of patent expirations of existing blockbuster drugs. Likewise, there has been a steadily increasing proportion of prescriptions dispensed for generics relative to drugs with market exclusivity.