Will companies turn away from blockbuster strategies in 2003?

“Since blockbusters are relatively rare and the cost of new drug development continues to rise, many drug companies, confronting strong and growing pressure to enhance drug development pipelines

By Editor on Jan 7, 2003

Since blockbusters are relatively rare and the cost of new drug development continues to rise, many drug companies, confronting strong and growing pressure to enhance drug development pipelines will re-evaluate their traditional blockbuster development strategies, said Kenneth Kaitin, Director of the Tufts Center. Also, as patents on several lucrative drugs expire this year, many firms will take a closer look at prescription to over-the-counter switches as a way to maintain revenue flow.

Kaitin believes the most consistently profitable drug companies will be those that succeed in shortening development times and terminating unpromising drugs earlier in the R&D cycle. Although average combined clinical and approval times for new drugs introduced in the United States since 1992 has dropped an impressive 25%, from 9.2 to 6.9 years, the research-based drug industry still faces the major challenge of shortening development times while improving clinical success rates, he said.

Tufts also predicts:

  • Marketing and commercial interests will play an increasingly important role in development decisions;

  • Investments in new R&D technologies, including genomics, combinatorial synthesis and proteomics, will increase;

  • Companies will expand the use of e-technologies to reduce the length and cost of clinical development; and

  • Implementation of the International Conference on Harmonization's (ICH's) Common Technical Document (CTD) guideline will benefit firms operating in ICH member regions.

    • Moving away from blockbusters and shortening development times are certainly healthy resolutions for pharma for the New Year. But if memory serves correctly, it seems they'sve appeared on the industry's best intentions list a time or two before.

    Somehow, we suspect the temptation that the promise a blockbuster brings to pharma's bottom line will be as hard to resist as that slice of chocolate cake we'sve all vowed to ignore. And further shortening development times may be as difficult as losing the 10 pounds you'sve gained eating Christmas cookies.

    Our prediction: chances are slim on both fronts.