The global pharmaceutical industry spends almost 30% of its revenues on R&D, amounting to nearly 270 billion euros.
The International Federation of Innovative Pharmaceutical Industry publishes the Facts & Figures 2024 report, which outlines the industry’s contribution globally.
In 2023, the industry filed 12,425 international patent applications and by October 2024 had more than 12,700 medicines in various stages of development.
The sector employs nearly 75 million people worldwide in direct, indirect and induced employment. More than one million are engaged in research into new treatments.
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The pharmaceutical industry leads the world in R&D investment, with 30% of its annual revenues devoted to this item. This amounted to nearly 270 billion euros in 2021, according to the data collected in the report Facts and Figures 2024 of the International Federation of Innovative Pharmaceutical Industries (Ifpma).
The document sets out the evolution, including forecasts, of investment by the top 50 pharmaceutical companies between 2012 and 2026, with amounts set to double by the end of the period.
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This intense investment is reflected in a significant number of patent applications filed by industry in 2022, when it stood at 12,425. In addition, there are currently some 12,700 medicines in development worldwide, of which 285 are vaccines.
In the last 20 years, 942 new active substances have been approved worldwide, 69 of them in 2023. Although the trend is growing, it is mainly due to the momentum of China and the US. This is a circumstance that the Spanish and European pharmaceutical industry has been warning about for some time, due to the need to strengthen the sector in order to recover competitiveness, as indicated in the Draghi report.
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These new medicines treat such prevalent diseases as cancer, cardiovascular conditions or infections. In the period from 2019 to 2023 there was a focus on oncology, neurology and immunology, with 56% of the total number of launches for these pathologies. Very relevant advances that, as the report shows, would not have been possible without an adequate framework of intellectual property protection.
The report recalls how the most disruptive research has made great achievements in recent years. For example, the revolutionary monoclonal antibodies whose use is now widespread, or advances in obesity, cell therapies or even Alzheimer’s disease. In this degenerative pathology, 99% of trials failed in 2019, while in 2021, 2023 and 2024, treatments have been authorised that treat symptoms and slow cognitive deterioration, improving patients’ quality of life. In the case of the innovative GLP-1 treatments, the administration of which is already considered a paradigm shift in the management of the global obesity problem.
The report also highlights the complexity of new drug research, in which artificial intelligence and machine learning are set to streamline and revolutionise biomedicine.
All of this is driving progress in global health, the fruits of which are also detailed in the report. In the last half century, vaccines have saved six lives every minute (154 million), and forecasts indicate that investing in prevention and health over the next 20 years could save 60 million lives and increase global GDP by 8% by 2040.
In short, the pharmaceutical industry is unique because its innovations prolong and save lives, as well as bringing growth and prosperity to the societies in which they operate. That is why it needs an environment that fosters investment and collaboration, enabling companies to develop research in key areas and challenges such as new antibiotics.
