Established in 1976 by research pioneer Dr. Louis Lasagna, the Tufts Center for the Study of Drug Development (Tufts CSDD) at Tufts University is an independent, academic, non-profit research group that assesses the pace and nature of new drug development.

Over the past three decades, Tufts CSDD’s multidisciplinary research staff has undertaken path-breaking research that has influenced industrial R&D strategy and public policy affecting the development and regulation of new medicines. For example:

• Tufts CSDD determined the cost of developing a new prescription medicine, widely referenced by the U.S. Congress, drug developers, and analysts worldwide. We recently updated the cost to be $802 million (in 2000 dollars).
  
  
• Recently we assessed the therapeutic impact of incremental innovation, sometimes referred to as me-too drug development, developed the first assessment of the state of the principal investigator landscape in the U.S., and evaluated the role of cost effectiveness in formulary and clinical practice guidelines in the U.S. and Europe.
  
  
• Early on, Tufts CSDD was the first to document the existence of a significant drug lag between the United States and the United Kingdom. That study, which conclusively demonstrated the link between regulatory policy and innovation, shaped policy debates on the role of the FDA for more than 20 years.

Click here for a chronology of research milestones.

Tufts CSDD 2007 Catalog is available