Therapy Analysis - Pharma R&D Annual Review
Top companies - little change at the top after quiet year for megamergers
The Top 25 companies by pipeline size – shown in Table 2 – have originated just over 20% of all drugs in development, demonstrating just how much the pharma industry is to a large degree concentrated in the major players. GSK remains at the top for a second consecutive year, with its major rival Pfizer staying in the runner-up position. Merck & Co appears to have shown the biggest growth, partly due to bolstering from small acquisitions such as Sirna Therapeutics. Big mergers are largely notable for their absence this year, with only one affecting the occupants of the Top 10, Akzo’s sale of its pharmaceutical division Organon to Schering-Plough, which lifts the US firm to number 7 in the list. The only two companies to leave the Top 25 this year were the aforementioned Organon, and Medarex, which slips to number 36.
Another product of a recent merger is Mitubishi Tanabe Pharma which debuts in the Top 25 this year at number 23. This brings the number of Japanese companies in the Top 25 to 4 – a record – with Astellas just holding onto its position as the pre-eminent star of the East. The only other entry into the Top 25 is Boehringer Ingelheim, which is staying resolutely independent. It is worth noting that although Roche operates and lists Genentech separately it does own the Californian concern, so if their pipelines were listed together Roche would be slightly higher in the Top 10.
Although pipeline expansion can be seen in almost all of the Top 25, there has also been a very significant increase in the total number of companies involved in pharma R&D, with the 2008 total standing at 1,967. This is up 198 from the same timepoint last year, and represents an 11.2% increase. Again some, but probably not all of the increase can be attributed to better data capture. How this fits in with previous years is shown in Graph 3. It illustrates how, despite a decade of fervent merger and acquisition activity, the total number of companies with active pharma pipelines has nigh on doubled in the past ten years.
Pharmaprojects also tracks yearly the number of companies listed with just one or two compounds in their portfiolio, this being roughly analogous to tracking the number of start-ups. Companies with just one drug in their pipeline comes in this year at 503, up from 477 last year, with the corresponding figures for 2-drug companies falling slightly to 267, from 284 the previous year. So it appears that these small companies are not where the growth is coming from this year.
