The Pharmaceutical Medicine Year That Was

Abstract

It is probably fair to say that 2006 has not been a radically different year in the US; let us briefly survey the landscape. As we knew a year ago, large pharma is beset with its problems of relatively empty development pipelines and imminently expiring patents. The latter has led to a steady stream of patent litigation between large pharma and the generic manufacturers. The complexity of these cases has attracted the attention of the federal authorities because of the anticompetitive aspects involved; in some cases, the short legal deadlines seem to make litigation automatic. Large pharma’s response to these fundamental problems has been to continue to license early-stage products from small pharma (or even to buy these small companies, lock, stock and barrel). Thus, the year has been punctuated by these occasional, high-valued deals that have featured elsewhere in this volume of the International Journal of Pharmaceutical Medicine (see the Summary of Recent Deal Activity section in each issue). There is still no evidence that large pharma has lost its mega-merger orientation and rumours of yet further transactions between the few large and famous companies continue to circulate from time to time. For small companies, the financial situation was a bit brighter during 2006 than in the previous year. By mid-year, there were several venture capital firms who had accomplished impressive fundraising and, thus, ‘the window has been opened’ a bit for small companies seeking investment. When added to the money coming from large pharma, the small pharma environment has improved during the year, even if it is not like the halcyon days of the early