It has been a long journey but the end is finally within sight for the large biopharmaceutical companies that have had to traverse steep patent cliffs along the way, which served to play havoc with their bottom-lines. It is estimated that a total of more than $300 billion of prescription drugs sales will have lost their patent exclusivity and become exposed to generic competition before the worst is over in a couple of years.
With the 34th annual J.P. Morgan Healthcare conference now in our rearview mirror we can reflect on the lessons learned from that pivotal event that traditionally helps set the agenda for the industry.
SAN FRANCISCO – The number of completed mergers and acquisitions in the biopharma industry mushroomed in 2015, generating a total deal value of more than $300 billion, establishing a new record for the industry, according to EY's Firepower Index and Growth Gap Report 2016.
SAN FRANCISCO – The capital markets were already ugly heading into the 34th J.P. Morgan Healthcare conference (JPM) and they got even worse by the day as biopharma companies strutted their stuff for four intense days of presentations. Although the overall message that resulted from the event is that the industry is alive and well with strong fundamentals, it didn't translate into a positive performance on the markets until the final day of the meeting.
SAN FRANCISCO – In delivering the Alliance for Regenerative Medicine's (ARM) 2016 state of the industry briefing at the Biotech Showcase event, chair of the international advocacy organization representing the regenerative medicine and advanced therapies (RM/AT) community, Edward Lanphier, said 2015 had been a great year for the sector, exemplified by excellent clinical data readouts that have helped attract significant investments and big pharma validation through major partnerships.
SAN FRANCISCO – Ironwood Pharmaceuticals Inc., of Cambridge, Mass., has set out to show investors that it has a strategy in place to build a sustainable commercial enterprise generating high-margin growth.
In 2014, the industry tied a longstanding 2000 record total of $36.9 billion raised from public and private financings. At the time, that amount was thought to be a hard act to follow, let alone beat. (See BioWorld Insight, Jan. 12, 2015.)
Although 2014 was always going to be a hard act to follow in terms of the record number of 77 biotech IPOs that were completed on U.S exchanges, the IPO window remained wide open despite a volatile year on the capital markets, particularly in the third and fourth quarters. In total, 54 companies successfully graduated to the public arena in 2015, collectively generating almost $5 billion, according to BioWorld Snapshots. That total ranks it the third highest annual total of IPOs.
It has been a very rough start to 2016 on the capital markets with the Dow Jones Industrial average shedding almost 3 percent of its value in the wake of geopolitical and macroeconomic uncertainties – but this hasn't seemed to deter both public and private biotech companies from their plans to boost their cash balances.
It was a busy December for the FDA as it gave the green light to five more new molecular entities (NMEs), boosting the number of NME and new therapeutic biological products approved by the agency in 2015 to 45, an almost 10 percent increase over the 41 NMEs that were approved last year.
