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Editor's Take
An antidote for pharma’s malady
Aug. 27, 2008
Does anyone really understand big pharma? I’m sure many do, but to me, an outsider mostly interested in the technologies used for the basic R&D of the drugs in question, I’m struck by how the industry seems to thrive on insatiable momentum.
For the last year it seems, stock analysts have been waving caution signs in front of investors about the inability of pharmaceuticals to develop new drugs to replace those that pass along to the generics market. As generics take over the marketplace, the big dogs like Sanofi-Aventis, Merck, GlaxoSmithKline, Pfizer (it’s amazing how many of them spring up isn’t it?) must get new drugs approved as soon as possible. Why? Well, development costs are spectacular and the investments must pay.
These days, the U.S. Patent Office and the Federal Drug Administration are sometimes considered the toughs that put the choke hold what used to be a lucrative product avenue: apply for a patent, file continuations on the patent, conduct clinical trials, wait for FDA approval. But the approvals aren’t coming along like they used to, thanks to heightened concerns over drug safety. And the U.S. Patent Office is tired of spending time dealing with continuation filing. They’ve got a hard enough time dealing with a record number of patent filings of all kinds.
So then, it’s a grim spectacle and it gets worse when one takes into account the sheer portability of a drug product, which seems tailor-made for exploitation via an online black market. More than 3,000 online sellers of major pharma products have been identified. So lucrative are these fake pharmas that the practice has been dubbed “brandjacking”.
Without a constant flow of product pouring through the drug pipeline, big pharma’s thirst is never quenched. So where do they go? The answer is biotechnology, and through a number of promising new therapeutic innovations—from imaging systems to targeted nanoparticle drug delivery tools—big pharma has moved away from what was once a realm of high-profile IPOs to a wave of high-profile M&As and licensing agreements.
It’s an impressive adaptation that has kept the ball rolling for these companies even in the face of economic gloom.
And it’s been good for science in general. Biotech firms that might never have attracted necessary investment in a time of evaporated capital now have a cash cow ready and willing to get it hands on any product, as long as its one they can market and sell quickly.
