This year will be a doozy in terms of drugs going off-patent – undoubtedly a point of contention that will be discussed at length at next week’s J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference.
Dickson Data put together an excellent infographic that illustrates the various drugs that will be prey for generics makers this year.
Drugs aimed at mitigating heart disease will be most impacted: AstraZeneca cholesterol drug Crestor will be the biggest big pharma blow, as it brings in some $6.4 billion in annual revenue. Other major hits will be Daiichi Sankyo’s high blood pressure drug Benicor and Merck’s cholesterol drug Zetia.
AstraZeneca, in particular, has been extremely cautious in guarding its patents – for example, it tried to crush potential generic competition from Actavis in a 2013 suit. Apotex has worked to mimic Benicor, and Glenmark has worked on a version of Zetia.
Indeed, it’ll be worth watching what AstraZeneca and Merck, in particular, will say at the upcoming conference, in terms of how they’ll mitigate these losses this year. But 2016 will represent a shift in market dynamics, as you can see in the infographic below:
[Images courtesy of Dickson Data, Stock Monkeys]