The term "access to medicines" was, until a few years ago, associated with the discussion surrounding cheaper (generic) vital drugs (HIV, tuberculosis, etc.) in developing countries. For some time, Western countries and institutions (OECD, European Commission, etc.) have also begun to focus on "access to medicines" in an attempt to counteract "unsustainable" drug prices.

Expenditure on research and development (R&D) is mostly used by manufacturers as a justification for high prices. The real -resource consuming and high risk- basic research takes place mainly in the public sector (in universities and corresponding publicly funded research institutions) instead. Little publicised knowledge on public spending, however, exists so far. The project objective is to collect information on public contributions to drug research and development and thus contribute to the discussion on "Return on Investment of Public Investment".

The project was carried out in two stages: in Phase 1, a methodology (search strategy and sources) was developed to systematically identify the contribution of public research funding to the development of new drugs. In Phase 2, the methodology of the Phase 1 analytical approach was piloted using three selected paediatric Orphan Drugs (Spinraza®, Brineura®, Crysvita®), which were approved by the European Medicines Agency (EMA) in 2017.

The research on public and philanthropic R&D funding proved to be very time consuming. Obstacles were a lack of transparency in the various databases and sources and/or complexity of the search filters (narrowing the search period and distinguishing between basic research and product development research) as well as language barriers. The search strategies had to be adapted individually; the results vary greatly. Further piloting such as a refinement of the search strategy is underway.