The pharmaceutical industry is facing the largest "expiration date" in its history: the end of his patents. A $30 billion market this year alone, previously in the hands of large multinationals (Pfizer, Bristol-Myers, Merck, Eli Lilly, Novo Nordisk), will pass to the smallest industries in the sector, in view of the end of the production rights of some of the best-known pills. Which will become generic drugs. The fall of the anti-cholesterol patent lipitor (in March), for example, it cost Pfizer $9.6 billion. In the United States alone, more than 6 million units were sold in 2011, before collapsing to 1 million 300 thousand in the last quarter.
Something similar happens to the giant Bristol-Myers Squibb: the patent on the Plavix, the bestselling blood-clotting drug, expired this year and will cause the company to sue $4 billion in losses. The most striking case is that of aids: theAtripla it is the best-known drug for HIV-positive people and its patents will expire in the next 5 years. One of the active ingredients, theefavirenz, will end in 2013, giving serious headaches to the top management GlaxoSmithKline.
Pharmaceutical companies, which see revenues cut by 10-20 percent, are threatening a slowdown in the arrival of new products. Perspective that worries the European Union, which last year granted Pfizer a six-month extension on the Lipitor patent. A sort of controversial subsidy for companies with staggering turnover.
As much as the shareholders are not happy, patients benefit from it: for Lipitor consumers the price of the drug collapsed in 24 hours. A similar example applies to Atripla, where the switch to the generic will save US health insurance funds almost 1 billion dollars.
(Riccardo Guidi @riccardoguidi87)
17-10-2012 PANORAMA
