An analysis of the drug-focused licensing deals (out-licensing and in-licensing) made by Big Pharma companies shows an uptick in partnering from 2014 to 2015, followed by a slight decrease in 2016 that has held steady through 2018. Despite that slight decline, the peer set increased deal volume by roughly 15% between the beginning and the end of the five-year period. Total deal values rose even more, roughly 25%.
Immuno-oncology continues to draw pharma companies to the deal table.
Acquisitions and licensing are core to pharma and big biotech growth as pipelines thin and assets lose patent protection. Yet a look back at prior years’ eye-popping deal sums reveals many billions of dollars of write-offs and lost value. Key assets failed or disappointed in at least half of 2014’s largest acquisitions and licensing deals. Failure is part of the drug discovery landscape, but some lessons can be learned from dud deals.
Gene therapy has undergone transformative enhancements over the last 20 years, with improvements to technologies and advances in the pipeline that aim to invigorate the field in its second generation.
This analysis includes insights from eight interviewed experts from pharma, medical device, or digital health companies.
In order to continually and effectively compete with its peers, as well as with smaller specialty pharmaceutical companies and biotechnology companies, the top 20 global pharmaceutical peer set turns to deal-making as a means to balance out its internally developed portfolio, and to take advantage of the broader capabilities of partners or takeover targets.
With the approval of the first CAR-T therapies – Novartis’ Kymriah and Gilead/Kite’s Yescarta – what had been the promise of cutting-edge science is now reality.
Pharmaceutical companies are attempting to maximize value from all angles, including internal investment in R&D and externalization via deal-making.
Payer partnerships are becoming widespread as emerging markets become wealthier, but access challenges remain. Partnerships with proven success include “strategic philanthropy,” patient access programs, tiered pricing, and service support models.
The competitive landscape for regenerative medicine continues to evolve. As private sector investment in active players continues, efforts by governments in the US and EU are helping to advance the field, including the recent passage of the 21st Century Cures Act in the US, providing a special status pathway for regenerative medicine advanced therapies.
Immuno-oncology is an emerging field in medicine that has the potential to radically change how cancer is treated.
Biosimilar competition is providing payers with opportunities to contain costs in a category that accounts for a significant proportion of total drug expenditure. The launch of the biosimilar insulin Basaglar is a threat to the insulin-based product market, which includes long-time reference product Lantus as well as newer entrants Toujeo and Tresiba. More aggressive payers are excluding branded insulin products in favor of the less expensive biosimilar, forcing switches in existing patient populations. As such, manufacturers of branded insulin products will need to offer deeper discounts to remain on payers’ formularies and contracts.
Between 2012 and 2016, Big Pharma – a peer set of approximately 16 firms across the world with large R&D and sales organizations, and annual revenues in excess of $10bn – signed over 1,200 drug-focused deals, growing at a compound annual growth rate of 12%.
Bristol-Myers Squibb’s (BMS) Opdivo (nivolumab) has outpaced Merck’s Keytruda (pembrolizumab) primarily in non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) because of its early approval in squamous NSCLC, updated National Comprehensive Cancer Network (NCCN) guidelines in 2015,
Recent years have seen changes in the marketplace that have made successful new drug launches difficult to achieve. Many therapy areas are becoming hypercompetitive, with similar treatments jostling for position, and even those products with evidence of superior efficacy or better tolerability still have to overcome reimbursement hurdles.
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