Setting drug development speed records

Blurry image of scientsts in the lab

Source: © Getty Images

The pandemic treatment sprint was spectacular, but hard to match under less unusual circumstances

One thing I’m sure of after 20 years of blogging about drug discovery and development is that the general public doesn’t pay much attention to it. Which is why I wonder about the possible public-opinion effects of some of the development timelines we’ve seen during the past two years of the Covid-19 pandemic. The successful ones were extremely rapid and extremely impressive, and my worry is that people will assume that this is now the norm.