Corporate News
Pharmaceutical companies at pains to diversify their drug portfolios
As the industry comes to grips with the expiration of about $130 billion in patented products over the next four years, its executives can no longer bank on a single drug to drive earnings. Photo/FILE
Posted Wednesday, February 10 2010 at 00:00
Daniel Hoffman, a pharmaceutical consultant in the Philadelphia area, is skeptical that any of the more popular strategies will generate the kinds of revenues the industry is about to lose.
Many of these solutions come with their own problems, he says.
Pursuing orphan drugs has become all the rage because Novartis took Gleevec, initially developed to treat a rare blood cancer, and found it treated six other life-threatening diseases.
Gleevec now generates about $3.7 billion in yearly sales, and some industry executives hope to duplicate that kind of success with their orphan drugs. But that won’t be easy.
Even if companies can identify broader uses for treatments of relatively rare diseases, they may face political backlash over the drugs’ costs, because orphan drugs are generally very expensive to develop and manufacture.
“Is this a means of generating the kinds of revenue for which the sun is setting on a Lipitor or Plavix?” Hoffman asks. “I tend to doubt it. It’s questionable whether the scientific paradigm of medicinal chemistry that has resulted in huge successes in areas like cardiovascular drugs can be as productive in the future.”
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