What trials cost, from the only per-trial disclosure that exists in public data: $5.8B of research payments across 5,413 US trials, matched to ClinicalTrials.gov by registry number. A floor on cost, auditable to the NCT.
What trials cost per study and per patient, who is spending, and exactly how much of the real cost the disclosed floor captures.
Sponsors disclosed $5.8B in research payments across 5,413 US trials. The median trial shows $272K, but per patient is the better benchmark.
Median disclosed cost per enrollee: $10.6K in phase 1, $4.0K in phase 2, $2.1K in phase 3. Scale, not spend, separates the phases.
Every trial cost estimate you have seen is probably a survey, a model, or a 2014 mean. Here is what the only public per-trial disclosure captures.
Cost per enrollee is reported trial spend divided by enrollment: the per-patient benchmark that makes a 42-person phase 1 comparable to a phase 3.
AbbVie leads disclosed drug-trial spending at $899M across 565 trials, a photo finish over Lilly. Ten sponsors hold two thirds of the money.
Cancer trials hold $1.77B of the $5.8B sponsors disclosed, more than any other therapeutic area. Per patient, the disclosed checks are among the smallest.
The annual data report and press asset, briefed once these six are live.