A steep decline in innovation levels, combined with the threat from generics and drug recalls is causing concern to several pharmaceutical companies
As a result, pharmaceutical companies across the world are collaborating with biotech companies, thus relying on external resources to boost their innovation and productivity levels.
"Having unsuccessfully implemented merger and acquisition (M+A) strategies to boost their falling productivity levels, pharmaceutical companies are now developing strategic alliances and licensing deals to improve weakening drug pipelines and achieve sustainable revenue growth", notes Frost andSullivan Research Analyst Raghavendra Chitta.
In keeping with the trend of licensing deals, currently, 70 per cent of the industry's drug pipeline is with biotech companies.
Moreover, the industry is exhibiting significant changes as an increasing number of pharmaceutical companies are focussing their efforts on licensing early-stage compounds due to spiralling costs of late-stage compounds.
However, while early-stage compounds are less expensive, they possess a higher risk quotient.
The Pharmaceutical Index has been continuously underperforming the S+P Index, with negative returns for the first time in 2004.
In addition, the recent high-profile drug recalls of Vioxx and the impending patent expiry of drugs that account for $72.00 billion in present-day sales, have adversely affected the pharmaceutical industry.
Further, fast-growing generic drugs are contributing to about 48.0 per cent of the total drug sales in the US pharmaceutical market (currently the world's largest pharmaceutical market), thereby creating impediments for pharmaceutical companies.
Although research and development (R+D) expenditure has been rising steadily, the number of new molecular entities (NMEs) submitted to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has drastically reduced, thereby indicating a drop in RandD productivity.
"In response to this, pharmaceutical companies will need to intensify their efforts to reformulate and discover new applications", states Chitta.
"While this may involve reduced costs in comparison to the costs involved in the discovery of new drugs, it will become essential for pharmaceutical companies to concentrate on improving their productivity and efficiencies to sustain long-term growth." The strategic alliance forged between Roche and Genentech in 1990 that provided Roche with access to Genentech's innovations has set a precedent, driving large pharmaceutical companies to focus on licensing and alliance deals with other companies.
In addition, as pharmaceutical companies such as Merck, best known for their internal RandD efforts, are pursuing feasible alliances and licensing deals, this trend is expected to continue.
With more than 1500 alliances formed in the period 1997-2002, the contribution of licensed products towards total sales is predicted to increase from 20 per cent in 2002 to 40 per cent in 2010.
The completion of the human genome project (HGP) has had a significant impact on the drug discovery industry, radically transforming beliefs related to disease and patient homogeneities.
At the same time, significant advances are being made in genomics, proteomics and other allied areas, which are expected to encourage pharmaceutical companies to revise their R+D operations.
Over the period of the next five years, pharmaceutical companies will need to increase efforts to strengthen their pipelines in order to sustain the historic growth rates of sales revenues.
Key Alliances and Partnerships in the World Drug Discovery Industry is part of the Drug Discovery Technologies Subscription, which also includes research in the following markets: Regulatory Hurdles in European Drug Discovery, World eClinical Trials Markets, Drug Discovery Markets in Europe.
The research provides a description of the pharmaceutical business of the top ten pharmaceutical companies in the industry.
It offers a comprehensive listing of products in development as well as those in the market.
This research service also analyses the key alliances of these top pharmaceutical companies.
