What ails Big Pharma?

By Katherine EbanOne of America's most far-seeing companies, Vertex Pharmaceuticals, the biopharmaceutical startup so memorably chronicled in journalist Barry Werth's classic book, The Billion Dollar Molecule: The Quest for the Perfect Drug, is back.Or rather, twenty years later, Werth is back with the sequel, The Antidote: Inside the World of New Pharma. The book revisits Vertex as the company grows into adolescence and actually achieves its goal of bringing a drug to market. Even though there is less drama this time and more mundane human-resource type challenges, Werth's excellent writing takes the reader deep into the heart of Vertex and into the dilemma facing the biotech pioneers, and us all. We're broke, and have embraced low-cost generic medicine for the masses. Flogged by Wall Street to produce blockbusters, Big Pharma has responded with derivative me-too drugs (the fifth cholesterol reducer on the market, anybody?). Now, the innovation pipelines are dry, the pharma companies are peering (or falling) over the patent cliff. And companies like Vertex are stoking fury with wildly priced super-orphan drugs for subsets of people with rare diseases.This is the backdrop for The Antidote, in which Vertex struggles to navigate the FDA's demands for patient safety, Wall Street's demands for returns and its own need to take big bold costly risks that are likely to end in failure. The sequel also keeps its eye on a more existential question plaguing corporate America: Can compan...
Source: PharmaGossip - Category: Pharma Commentators Authors: Source Type: blogs