You may have just clumsily stated your point initially. If you are talking about the entire process...construction of a new cide, complete testing including optimization, to a point you are ready to take the product to human trials, then I don't think that portion of your estimate is wildly unreasonable.
Yes it was my original point. Here is the relevant initial post:
Certainly it will be a good thing for NNVC to develop a 'cide effective against MERS-CoV. If they start now they might have something that works on rats in a couple of years. A year later, if they are more on the ball then than they are now, they may have toxicity tests completed on it. A year after that, they may have completed phase I trials...
Note that after they have something that works on rats I say they might have tox testing done a year later. The tox testing phase itself takes about a year. Note that in the case of Flucide we had the drug we wanted to test and put into clinical trials a year ago, when NNVC had its pre-IND meeting. Yet the tox tests have not even begun, and when they have started, we may have to wait 6 months before they are completed. So in Flucide's case "getting ready for tox tests and doing them" is taking at least 18 months. I assumed a year for a new drug. Obviously then, having a drug that works on rats means having the drug that works on rats and is the drug you want to put into clinical trials. Otherwise I would have inserted another step, "turning the first drug that works rats into the one you actually want to do clinical trials on" before the tox testing step.
This explanation is anal and drawn out but apparently you require it.
Six years is actually a perfectly normal time for drug development, from first tries in a laboratory to FDA approved drug. If anything it's optimistic, since for most drugs that span of time is actually more than six years. But the NNVC exceptionalists are outraged at the thought that, as revolutionary as its antiviral technology may be, NNVC has to do pretty much what every other biotech has to do to get a drug to market.