High costs of complying with drug development regulations slow progress and contribute to high drug prices and, hence, mounting health care costs.  If it is exorbitantly expensive to bring new therapies to approval, fewer agents can be developed with available resources, impeding the emergence of urgently needed treatments and escalating prices by limiting competition.  Excessive regulation produces numerous speed bumps on the road to drug authorization.  Although an explosion of knowledge could fuel rapid advances, progress has been slowed worldwide by inefficient regulatory and clinical research systems that limit access…