Research, Not Heavy Hand, to Tamp Down Drug Costs: NIH’s Collins

Mapping the human genome took 13 years and $400 million the first time. Now, it takes two days and costs $800, and Francis S. Collins bets that same evolution will drive down costs for cutting-edge treatments built on NIH-funded research.

“It’s going to come down,” Collins said about the cost of life-saving technologies that hit the market with much excitement—and price tags in the millions. “We just have to be sure we’re doing our part in optimizing the engineering of the development of therapeutics, so that costs continue to come down.”

Collins should know. He led the international project to ...