A comprehensive data set of all new chemical entities approved between 1982 and 2003 shows that Europe is pulling further ahead of the United States in pharmaceutical research productivity.
The study, "Global Drug Discovery: Europe Is Ahead," was published in Health Affairs.
While the U.S. share of approved new drugs did increase in between 1993 and 2003, as compared to the previous decade, that simply reflected the fact that the pharmaceutical industry poured more of its research dollars into American labs, said study author Donald Light, a professor of psychiatry at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey.
Over both decades, the U.S. share of approved new drugs lagged behind its share of research funding.
On a dollar-for-dollar basis, Europe was more productive than the United States in discovering new drugs, and the European productivity advantage was greater in the period from 1993 to 2003 than it had been in the period from 1982 to 1992.
Japan outstripped both Europe and the United States in pharmaceutical research productivity over those 20 years.
"Congressional leaders and others concerned about high prices of new patented drugs will be heartened by this analysis, because lower European prices seem to be no deterrent to strong research productivity," Light wrote.
He cites previous research showing that pharmaceutical companies are able to recover research costs and make a "good profit" at European prices, and he rejects the notion that Europeans are "free-riding" on American pharmaceutical research investments.