2010 el año del cambio profundo para las "Big Pharma"

Saturday, 6 February 2010

US Outlook: It might be a little early to declare, but 2010 looks like being a year of profound change for Big Pharma.

Almost as if a management consulting-led fad has swept through the industry, the world's biggest drug makers are, one by one, declaring a shift away from research and development spending.

Where previously these companies have thought of themselves as laboratories for world-changing drugs, there seems to be an emerging view that their core competence is, in fact, their aggressive – and always controversial – ability to market their drugs to doctors and (in the US) patients.

Announcements by Pfizer and GlaxoSmithKline, the two industry goliaths, this week, and AstraZeneca earlier, have put concerns about return on investment in R&D front and centre. AstraZeneca responded with 8,000 job cuts, Pfizer promised to lop 25 per cent from its research budget, and Sanofi-Aventis is next week expected to propose moving in a similar direction.

Sensing the wind in their favour, revolutionaries on Wall Street and in consulting argue that shareholders will be best served by Big Pharmaending all early-stage drug research entirely. Cheaper, they say, to license in new compounds from smaller biotech-style companies, or from academia, after they have already shown promise.

Más...