Methods Used to Assess Pharmaceutical Research and Development Costs

This letter addresses the methods in an Original Investigation titled “Research and Development Spending to Bring a Single Cancer Drug to Market and Revenues After Approval” by Prasad and Mailankody 1 and published in a recent issue of JAMA Internal Medicine. Specifically, it calls attention to the fact that these methods do not appropriately apply accounting or finance standards, and, consequently, measure neither “spending” nor “revenues.”