Major drugmaker GSK leverages 23andMe's consumer genomic database for its drug development strategy

September 21, 2018 | Case Study

The cost of developing a new pharmaceutical drug today and successfully bringing it to market is approximately $2.5 billion, double what it used to be a decade ago. The steep rise in costs comes despite an intense effort in recent years to bring efficiency to pharmaceutical R&D. Assessing this risk and filtering out as early as possible compounds that may not eventually get approved is essential to the pharmaceutical industry and involves checking the effectiveness of drugs as well as the likelihood of toxic events. This process can be potentially enhanced by leveraging aggregated human genomic data.