Vaccines are more likely to get through clinical trials than any other type of drug — but have been given relatively little pharmaceutical industry support during the last two decades, according to a new study by MIT scholars. Over a two-decade span from January 2000 to January 2020, private-sector vaccine-development efforts succeeded in bringing a drug to market 39.6 percent of the time, the researchers found. By contrast, programs to develop anti-infective therapeutics — medicines that lessen the severity of illness, including antibiotics — succeeded 16.3 percent of the time….
