If this technique turns out as good as stated then most pharma will want to adopt it.
The questions are what happens to the patents and what is there to prevent one company buying up the patent and then dominating the market.
It seems to me a substantial reduction in drug prices is likely to disrupt Big Pharma's profits so some mechanism is likely to step in the way of much cheaper prices actually reaching those who would benefit from them.
Perhaps I'm cynical, but having watched the unethical behavior of Big Pharma over the years something tells me that much lower prices seem too good to be true. More likely lower manufacturing costs will end up as increased profits for the manufacturers.
> One chemical used in some anti-cancer drugs, for example, costs pharmaceutical companies $3,200 per gram — 50 times more than a gram of gold. The UCLA researchers devised an inexpensive way to produce this drug molecule from a chemical costing just $3 per gram.
They are comparing the cost of the drug with the cost of the metal. They are totaly unrelated. Like comparing the cost of a I7 microprocesor with the cost of the iron to make the screws of the computer case.
My guess is that this development is interesting, but the cost of the catalyzers is a small part of the cost of the drug. They are not going to reduce the cost of the drug x1000 overnight.
The questions are what happens to the patents and what is there to prevent one company buying up the patent and then dominating the market.
It seems to me a substantial reduction in drug prices is likely to disrupt Big Pharma's profits so some mechanism is likely to step in the way of much cheaper prices actually reaching those who would benefit from them.
Perhaps I'm cynical, but having watched the unethical behavior of Big Pharma over the years something tells me that much lower prices seem too good to be true. More likely lower manufacturing costs will end up as increased profits for the manufacturers.