As consolidation continues to mark the pharmaceutical industry, more evidence to suggest that companies will increasingly turn to biotechnology companies in order to gain the competitive edge comes from a new study from Cutting Edge Information.
The report reveals how 'alliance specialists' such as Pfizer, Aventis, GlaxoSmithKline, AstraZeneca, Amgen, and Chiron set up precise collaborations. The Study goes on to examine how pharmaceutical companies can achieve partner-of-choice status to develop the next generation of blockbuster products.
As an example, the report highlights how newly named CEO of GlaxoSmithKline, Jean Pierre Garnier, once in position began buying promising drugs from small biotech firms and stimulated innovation by dividing internal research into several competing units. GSK has to date bought 24 products.
"The pharmaceutical industry knows that pharma-biotech alliances are critical in the desperate race to build tomorrow's blockbusters," said Jason Richardson, president of Cutting Edge Information. "Many companies, however, do not know that they must build specific strengths for those new partnerships."
According to the report, the largest pharma-biotech deals have increased in value each year - from a $125 million deal in 1993 to a $500 million alliance in 1998 to $1.3 billion in 2001. In fact, 2002 saw the highest number of strategic alliances since 2000. In 2003 we can expect these numbers to continue to rise.
