To bring a new drug to market costs on average $1.3 billion, according to a recent report in the Journal of the American Medical Association, and takes up to 20 years.

These astronomical sums do factor in the billions of dollars and years of research invested in what potentially promising therapies that ultimately lead nowhere, according to David Harel, the co-founder and CEO of CytoReason, an Israeli startup using AI and reams of data on the human body to create computational models of diseases affecting mankind.

“Developing new drugs is very, very expensive. And the reason it’s expensive is not only because of the direct costs, but also because of the high failure rate,” Harel tells NoCamels.

“Over 90 percent of drug development programs fail. And if they cost tens or hundreds of millions each, the cost of bringing one drug to the market is becoming ridiculously high,” he says.

Founded in 2016 and based in Tel Aviv, CytoReason has dozens of biological and data experts working with pharmaceutical and biotech companies to determine the most relevant and viable new treatments for patients, literally saving both time and money.

Keep reading at nocamels.com.

CytoReason Co-founder and VP of Biology Elina Starosvetsky is a Technion alumnus, and Technion Professor Shai Shen-Orr is also a co-founder.