NEWS OF THE WEEK ACS
NEWS
BOARD CHARTS COURSE FOR 2004 Directors approve budget, select chair, designate landmarks
A
Burke
NEW
T ITS MEETING DEC. 5 - 7 IN
Arlington, Va., the American Chemical Society Board of Directors approved a 2 0 0 4 budget with revenues of $420 million and expenses of $419 million, elected James D. Burke chair, and designated three new National Historic Chemical Landmarks. The board will be chaired in 2 0 0 4 by Burke, an at-large director serving his second term on the board. Burke, who is retired from Rohm and Haas, succeeds Nina I. McClelland. McClelland had completed three one-year terms as chair, the max-
imum allowed by ACS Board regulations. The board also elected Diane Grob Schmidt, section head of research and development at Procter & Gamble, to the board executive committee for a two-year term, and Dennis Chamot, associate executive director of the Division on Engineering & Physical Sciences at the National Research Council, for a one-year term. The board elected C. Gordon McCarty, adjunct professor at the University of South Carolina, Beaufort, to serve the remaining year of Stanley C. Israel's two-year term on the executive committee.
STUDY
Drug Development Costs About $1.7 Billion
P
harmaceutical manufacturers will be able to use a startlingly high appraisal of the cost of developing drugs when they attempt to justify the price of their products to skeptical consumers. According to a study by Bain & Co., the cost for a single new drug averages $1.7 billion, almost double the widely accepted $897 million estimate published in May by the Tufts Center for the
Study of Drug Development. According to Bain, the cost of drug development—currently 55% higher than the average cost from 1995 to 2000—is rising largely as a result of an increasing failure rate for prospective drugs in clinical trials. The rising cost of commercializing new drugs is another contributing factor—12 months of sales and marketing costs are included in Bain's cost estimate but not in the Tufts figure. The consulting firm says rising costs, declining productivity, and a shortening of the average period of exclusivity for new drugs have driven return on investment for
large pharmaceutical companies down from 9% in the late 1990s to 5% today. The study criticizes big pharma for failing to aggressively attack costs by designing more efficient trials, pursuing partnerships, and integrating drug development and marketing activities. Study coauthor Ashish Singh warns that by clinging to a blockbuster drug business model, which focuses efforts on drugs that will garner $1 billion or more in annual sales, the drug industry risks a reduction in stock market value, much like that faced by the computer industry in the 1990s. -RICKMULLIN
Israel died suddenly on Nov. 2 (C&EN, Nov. 10, page 13). ACS is expected to end 2003 with a net deficit of $847,000, which is $28,000 favorable to the approved budget, which Budget & Finance Committee Chair Burke calls "a remarkable achievement, given the adverse business climate the society faced during the year." Chemical Abstracts Service completed one of its best years ever and will provide a net contribution to ACS significantly greater than anticipated in the approved budget. The Publications Division will slightly exceed its net contribution target, largely as a result of strong revenue growth in electronic subscriptions. Careful control of costs also contributed to the financial performance of ACS in 2003. For 2 0 0 4 , the board voted funding of $500,000 for the ACS Matching Gift Fund. The board established a new medal, the Stanley C. Israel Regional Award for Advancing Diversity in the Chemical Sciences, which will first be presented in 2005. The board also established new National Historic Chemical Landmarks recognizing the development of the Beckman p H meter at California Institute of Technology; the development of durable press cotton fabric at the Southern Regional Research Center, New Orleans; and the work of Carl and Gerty Cori on the biochemical process by which the body converts glucose to glycogen and back again at Washington University, St. Louis. The board approved the reappointment of the editors of four ACS journals: Ann-Christine Albertsson axBiomacromolecules, Paul Alivisatos at Nam Letters, Philip S. Portoghese at Journal of Medicinal Chemistry, and Robin D. Rogers at the Journal of Crystal Growth & Design. A complete listing of the 2 0 0 4 ACS Board of Directors can be found at C&EN Online (http://www.cen-online.org). — RUDYBAUM
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C&EN
/DECEMBER
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2003
HTTP://WWW.CEN-ONLINE.ORG
