We have approached the pharmaceutical industry from virtually every angle: working for brands, for generics, for classes and for regulators. We have worked on drugs in development, drugs facing generic entry, and drugs replaced by follow-on products. We are endlessly fascinated by the rapid evolution of this unique industry, and we make it a point to stay abreast of recent developments. Our occasional blog, Pharma Corner, offers reflections on just a few of these topics.
January 14, 2020 – We all know that U.S. spending on prescription drugs far exceeds that in any other part of the world. U.S. per capita spending topped $1,220 in 2017, which (based on the most current data) was roughly 4 times that of Denmark, 3 times the U.K., 50% higher than in Germany, and…
July 8, 2019 – Theo Ndatimana, Pharm. D, the Director of Pharmaceutical Analytics at OnPoint, offers his perspective on this unusual product match up. On June 25, 2019, consumers awoke to news that AbbVie plans to buy Allergan in a $63B deal, under which Allergan shareholders will receive 0.866 of one AbbVie share along with…
September 4, 2018 – Claudia Cortez and Martin Kovach With the June 2016 British vote to leave the EU (so-called “Brexit”), by the end of March 2019 the United Kingdom (UK) will no longer be a part of the European Union (EU) single market, which allows for the free movement of people, goods, services, and capital among…
It is well known that the United States is staggering under the burden of an opioids epidemic. This has led to several efforts over the last 20 years to quantify the overall cost of opioid addiction and abuse. The various estimates agree that the cost is extremely high, but there are important differences—in some cases dramatic ones—between the estimates. The sources of these differences lie in methodological choices.
In October 2016, IMS Health, the dominant provider of pharmaceutical market data, merged with Quintiles to form QuintilesIMS, subsequently renamed IQVIA (pronounced “I-Q-via,” with emphasis on the “Q”). This merger is notable because Quintiles, the company acquired by IMS, was not a data company, but a contract research organization (CRO).
September 12, 2016 Over the past 30 years, there has been a marked increase in the average number of patents covering a single drug. Will it change the way pharmaceutical patents are litigated? It was once common wisdom about the pharmaceutical industry that a single product was normally covered by a single patent.[1] This one-product one-patent…
October 6, 2015 With sufficient participation, trade pacts have the potential to set international standards that eventually become global norms. This is exactly what opponents on both sides of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement fear will happen when it comes to biosimilar drug development. The deal, announced October 5, 2015, would apparently commit the 12…
August 21, 2015 There is no doubt that massive capital has lined up behind biosimilar drug development. Many of the top biologics will be losing patent protection over the next decade or have already lost it. And the Biologics Price Competition and Innovation Act (BPCIA) of 2010 has finally defined the pathway for biosimilars to…
July 22, 2015 Yesterday ended the long wait for the first appellate court interpretation of the 2010 Biologics Price Competition and Innovation Act (“BPCIA”). A 3-judge panel of the Federal Circuit (Lourie, Newman and Chen) struggled with arguably inconsistent language in the Act, which Judge Lourie described as “a riddle wrapped in an enigma.” Ultimately,…