At the start of the last decade, big pharma was getting smaller. Blockbuster medicines that had fueled years of growth were losing patent protection, exposing the industry’s largest companies to generic competitors. The resulting impact was so substantial it temporarily stalled the relentless upward march of U.S. drug spending.
Today, big drugmakers are facing an even larger “patent cliff,” with more than $200 billion in annual revenue at risk through 2030. But this time around, many of the brand name drugs losing market exclusivity are biologic products, manufactured from living cells, rather than the chemical pills that previously dominated the ranks of pharma top-sellers.
These biologic drugs, like AbbVie’s anti-inflammatory treatment Humira and Merck & Co.’s top-selling cancer medicine Keytruda, will face competition from so-called biosimilar drugs that, unlike generics, may not be as easily substitutable. Still, it will be a treacherous period for drugmakers to navigate, as they will need to replenish their research pipelines and carefully manage new product launches to replace lost revenue.
“This is of tectonic magnitude,” Arda Ural, health sciences markets leader at the consultancy EY. The looming patent expirations “capture most blockbusters,” he added.
Besides Humira and Keytruda, drugs like Bristol Myers Squibb’s immunotherapy Opdivo, Johnson & Johnson’s immune disease medicine Stelara and Regeneron’s eye treatment Eylea will reach the end of their patent protection this decade.
The launch of Amgen’s copycat version of Humira last month represented a start of sorts for this looming industry-wide patent cliff. Nine other Humira biosimilars are set to arrive by mid-year. As a result, U.S. sales of the drug, which totaled $18.6 billion in 2022, are predicted to steadily shrink. READ MORE
By Jonathan Gardner
Source: biopharmadive.com
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