Nutra Pharma Corp (NPHC)

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Why 2018 is a make-or-break year for pharma

Many drugmakers have neglected their pipelines, and will look to acquisitions to bolster them

Published: Jan 4, 2018 8:44 a.m. ET

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/why-2018-is-a-make-or-break-year-for-pharma-2017-12-19


* Noticed 1 drug purchased for 710 million!!!


FROM ARTCILE:

This year looks — at least on paper — like an unprecedentedly good setup for the pharmaceutical industry.

But behind the scientific breakthroughs, a Food and Drug Administration churning out approvals and drug-price regulation never materializing, the industry appears shockingly fragile.

Some of drugmakers’ most profitable products are aging, or simply old — nearly two decades old, in some cases — and staring down new competition.

Meanwhile, many big companies’ pipelines, typically a source of new development and the next billion-dollar drugs, are dry.
Acquisitions will thus become an integral part of the path foward, industry observers say, especially after a year of underwhelming merger-and-acquisition activity.

“Not all big companies, but many of them, have lost their way during the last six or seven years, when it was so easy to make money doing other artificial things. And so they have neglected their pipelines,” said Brad Loncar, biotech sector expert and Chief Executive of Loncar Investments.

“We have got to get back to: You create value by creating new medicines for patients,” he said.

Read: New migraine drugs should hit the market in 2018
Take Johnson & Johnson JNJ, -5.29%  , for example.


Just months later, the company said it was discarding two of those drugs. The FDA had previously failed to approve one drug, sirukumab, while the other drug, talacotuzumab, was recommended against by an independent safety committee.

Even so, Remicade sales have been declining, while revenue for newer drugs make up a relatively small part of earnings, meaning the company’s bet on the remaining potential blockbuster drugs will need to pan out.
Read more: Johnson & Johnson discards two hoped-for billion-dollar drugs
Drugmaker Celgene Corp.’s CELG, -6.07%  top drug Revlimid is also slated to be a top industry drug by revenue in 2018, according to the EP Vantage report.

But the company’s reliance on a few very profitable drugs hurt it in the third quarter, when Revlimid sales came in below consensus, as did the company’s psoriatic arthritis drug Otezla.

Meanwhile, Celgene also largely abandoned product candidate GED-0301, which it had high hopes for in Crohn’s disease and had paid about $710 million to acquire in 2014. The decision puts more pressure on the company’s ozanimod to be successful in Crohn’s and other indications, MarketWatch reported in October.

Of course, health care is a big industry, and there’s always something new coming around the pike.