People are surprised how long it takes to bring new medicines to the market.

Question: What surprises people about your job?

Sonia Patel: So firstly, they’re always fascinated to hear that it takes so long to get a new molecule out to market. So that always seems like so much debate around how long it takes and why and I go onto explain that there’s reasons for this is because medicines have to go through a series of carefully controlled clinical trials which test new drugs for safety, efficacy and the highest scientific standards are always applied. And that’s why it takes so long because you have to go through various trials of human clinical trials. At the end of that, they’re always amazed to hear about just how long it takes, how much effort it takes.  But then at the end of it, how valuable it is when we produce medicines that treat areas of such great medical need.  So for example, when I spoke about Myroviroc and it was the first of a new oral treatment of the HIV and AIDS, and they really appreciate the work that we do.

Recorded on: July 14, 2008