Filling of modern insulin in vials in plant in Hillerød, Denmark
UNEVEN GROWTH Mixer on the No.3 granulation line
Novo Nordisk’s fermentation factory in Kalundborg, Denmark
Uphill deduster and product diverter on the No.10 tableting line
The global pharmaceutical market continues to grow, but the slow economic recovery in Europe is still having an effect. Sarah Houlton casts her eye over the biggest stories from the pharma industry over the past year, in which acquisitions, new in-licensing deals and a focus on fighting Ebola have all featured prominently.
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lobal annual spend on medicines is set to top $1 trillion for the first time in 2014, having ended 2013 just shy of that figure at $989 billion. The market continues to grow – the IMS Institute for Healthcare Economics predicts that by 2018 it may top $1.3 trillion in its recent report, ‘Global outlook for medicines through 2018’. But, they caution, while the global economic recovery is set to strengthen in the next couple of years, the pharma growth rate will peak at 7 per cent in 2014. And there remain significant risks from an uneven economic recovery in Europe, political tension within Russia, and the fallout of recent events in Africa and the Middle East.
Combining strengths The trend for companies to drive growth via merger and acquisition continues. While there were no true mega-mergers after AstraZeneca 8 Industry Europe
rebuffed Pfizer’s advances in May, the usual host of smaller deals kept market-watchers busy. One of the more interesting was USbased Botox-maker Allergan, which was being stalked by notoriously slash-and-burn Valeant, but instead sold out to Dublin-based Actavis, whose stance on R&D is rather less negative than Valeant’s. Roche company Genentech was also on the acquisition trail, buying breast cancer specialist Seragon. There were also a couple of notable spinouts. Bayer announced it is hiving off its materials science business to focus on its life sciences operations, in pharma and agrochemicals. Reckitt Benckiser is spinning out its pharma business into a separate entity, Indivior. This will allow it to focus on its consumer health business. Merck & Co, meanwhile, is going the other way, selling its consumer care products to Bayer.
There was also the usual spate of inlicensing deals as big pharma looked to refill its pipelines. AstraZeneca announced a whole host of them, including with Almirall and with Synairgen, with a particular focus on respiratory and cancer projects. It also bought out Bristol-Myers Squibb’s diabetes business, an area in which the two companies had previously been cooperating. Novartis got a little more creative, announcing two big asset swap arrangements and a joint-venture in April. It has acquired GlaxoSmithKline’s oncology portfolio for $14.5 billion, and in return GSK paid $7bn for Novartis’ vaccine division, with the exception of its flu vaccines. It also sold its animal health business to Lilly, increasing its focus on human health. In addition, Novartis and GSK have combined their consumer health portfolios via a roughly 1:2 joint venture.
