|
Very soon, most big pharmaceutical manufacturers will be faced with the challenge that many ‘blockbuster’ drugs will be coming off patent, resulting in lean times for their manufacturing pipelines. Generic companies are lining up to take over wellestablished markets, often within hours of patent expiry. As a consequence, big pharma faces a cliff edge that will have a massive impact on the industry. As the supply of new drugs dwindles, the shortfall will be most keenly felt by manufacturing companies, who will have fewer valuable products to manufacture.
This situation has long been predicted and the industry has been frantically restructuring, with several waves of high profile mergers and acquisitions. Enormous sums of money have been pumped into discovery research, which has been through many ‘paradigm shifts’ to improve productivity. On the surface, new product pipelines appear to be flowing again, but the signs are not good for manufacturing in the short-term. Ironically, although big pharma has been fairly immune to the current credit crisis, its problem time is looming for very different reasons.
|
