{"id":267190,"date":"2010-02-02T11:00:40","date_gmt":"2010-02-02T16:00:40","guid":{"rendered":"tag:business.theatlantic.com,2010:\/\/3.35169"},"modified":"2010-02-02T09:06:38","modified_gmt":"2010-02-02T14:06:38","slug":"why-the-large-pharma-companies-are-in-crisis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/267190","title":{"rendered":"Why the Large Pharma Companies Are in Crisis"},"content":{"rendered":"

2010 has gotten off to a vile start for the large pharma companies. They were key players right from the beginning of the Obama administration’s health care reform efforts – or, looked at another way, they were co-opted early – but are now facing a dead loss on their investment. And their problems did not lessen one bit during all the legislative wrangling. Drug discovery is still at what looks like an unsustainably low pace, regulatory and safety concerns are keener than ever, and patent expirations are still looming.<\/p>\n

That’s why we’re seeing both AstraZeneca and GlaxoSmithKline announcing
\nlayoffs, yet again. (Well, GSK’s announcement isn’t out yet, but the
\nwording of the sudden cancellation of a long-planned managerial retreat
\nin the face of their earnings announcement leads to only one
\nconclusion). More chemists and biologists are heading out unwillingly
\ninto the least welcoming market for pharma jobs in memory, and their
\nplaces are being taken by either contract employees in Asia or (in some
\nareas) by no one at all, as the companies contract their areas of
\nresearch.<\/p>\n

Those of us in the industry have mostly given up
\ntrying predict when this cycle will end. After all, people are still
\ngetting sick, and many of them have diseases that need better
\ntreatments than we now have. Somehow, though, we’ve gotten ourselves
\noverextended, paying for large research organizations that haven’t been
\nable to deliver enough new medicines. But making the companies smaller
\ndoesn’t seem like it’ll help much, either. More and more, it’s looking
\nlike the industry needs some new research (and financial) models – and
\nmore and more, it looks as if we don’t have any idea of what those
\nmight be. Individual partnership financing for drug projects?
\nOpen-source research of some sort? Teaming up with disease foundations
\nfor early-stage research? More collaborations between rivals to
\ndisperse the risks? If you have any ideas, come on down. Now’s the time.<\/p>\n

Derek Lowe blogs from inside the drug labs at In the Pipeline<\/a>.<\/i>


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2010 has gotten off to a vile start for the large pharma companies. They were key players right from the beginning of the Obama administration’s health care reform efforts – or, looked at another way, they were co-opted early – but are now facing a dead loss on their investment. And their problems did not […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2160,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-267190","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/267190","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2160"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=267190"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/267190\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=267190"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=267190"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=267190"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}