Access

Opinion and Comment

Nature Biotechnology 26, 981–983 (1 September 2008) | doi:10.1038/nbt0908-981

Cost/success projections for US biodefense countermeasure development

Jason Matheny , Michael Mair & Bradley Smith

To the Editor: To protect civilians against biological weapons and bioterrorism, the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has developed a list of essential medical countermeasure requirements. We performed a survey of candidate biodefense countermeasures in development and estimated their future clinical development costs, based on historical drug and vaccine development data.