[irq11]

You’re focusing on the wrong thing.

Even if you ignored the cost of regulation and development, the company who was producing this drug would need to spend millions of dollars a year on production just to keep a safe supply available. With a pool of a few hundred patients, all of whom are “cured” for a decade, it’s going to be an expensive drug no matter what regulatory system is in place.

[mistermann]

How do they make it in a lab to develop it initially? How is that possible, but it isn't possible to make small batches on demand?

[irq11]

They had a staff of skilled people who had been working on the project for years, most likely in an (expensive) laboratory that was purpose-built for the task of producing a transgenic virus destined for humans.

It’s not cheap to produce at any scale, and it’s typically more expensive to do small-scale production.

A million dollars can barely fund a startup for a year; it’s insane to think you can maintain a drug production facility on a tiny budget like that.

[mistermann]

But if making a small batch costs $1M, how do they afford to do the research for years in an academic setting?

> It’s not cheap to produce at any scale, and it’s typically more expensive to do small-scale production.

This is correct, but we're not speaking in relative terms, we're speaking in absolute terms. How can they afford to produce it in a lab (unless each research project has many, many millions to play with each year)? It doesn't seem logical to me.

[irq11]

Per the article, the development project cost hundreds of millions of dollars. It wasn’t cheap to produce.