Pharmaceutical innovation: how to catch up in France?

Summary France, the country that invented the vaccine, is struggling in the race for pharmaceutical innovation, as illustrated by the search for vaccines against Covid-19. The two authors of this Note, Margaret Kyle and Anne Perrot, analyze the reasons for France's lag and put forward recommendations to try to remedy it by looking at all the stages of innovation, from basic research to product development and marketing. All in all, France suffers from a series of dysfunctions in the pharmaceutical field, which have caused it to lose ground in the international innovation race. Reducing the complexity of the administrative system, bringing the world of basic research closer to the world of applied research and clinical research, and making better use of data to take into account the value of treatments in the economic management of products could form the basis of measures to promote innovation in this important sector.