Therefore, they argue, relying on the original drugmaker's safety and efficacy testing data is unsafe.

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Approximately 35% of drug development costs are for safety testing, while 65% are for efficacy testing.

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Paul Wicks, a co-author of the paper, said social network-run studies may be most useful for testing efficacy of so-called off-label or off-patent compounds that patients are using but are unlikely to ever attract pharmaceutical company interest.

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He realizes that requiring clinical testing for efficacy will slow things down and needlessly keep important drugs out of the hands of suffering patients.

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But the new studies testing vertebroplasty's efficacy took years to perform because doctors were reluctant to enroll patients.

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To save money for consumers, Waxman is willing to allow certain drugs, called biologic drugs, to enter the market without clinical testing that proves their efficacy.

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Scangos says companies should start looking for genetic variations that predict a drug's efficacy in the very early stages of clinical testing.

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Both drugs and devices must now be pre-certified for efficacy as well as for safety, in stages from lab testing to clinical trials, before ever having a shot at the market.

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South African politicians insist that they are worried about the long-term cost and efficacy of such drugs, and fret that western drug makers may use the country as a testing ground for markets elsewhere.

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Medivation says it is testing whether Dimebon can be safely combined with Aricept, with an aim toward beginning a combination efficacy trial in the future.

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