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Drug life-cycle technologies

Nature Reviews Drug Discovery volume 1, pages 751–752 (2002)Cite this article

Life-cycle management of on-patent pharmaceuticals is becoming increasingly important to biopharmaceutical companies as they are challenged to meet their growth expectations. The recent expiration of the Prozac patents provides a telling example of the impact of patent expiration. Within one year of expiration, generic fluoxetine was available from more than ten companies at 2% of the price of Prozac. Prozac revenues fell from US $1.3 billion on-patent during the first half of 2001, to US $380 million off-patent during the first half of 2002.

Compounding the threat from generics, biopharmaceutical companies are finding it more difficult to replace their drugs with new blockbusters. Overall, research and development (R&D) productivity fell by 25% from the first half to the second half of the 1990s. Given this environment, biopharmaceutical companies must look more aggressively at protecting the life cycles of their on-market drug franchises.

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Figure 1: Value of molecules going off-patent in next decade.
Figure 2: 1991–2000 industry R&D productivity.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. the Pharmaceuticals and Medical Products Practice, McKinsey & Company, 3075A Hansen Way, Palo Alto, 94304, California, USA

    Edd Fleming & Philip Ma

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  1. Edd Fleming
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  2. Philip Ma
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Edd Fleming is an associate partner and Philip Ma is a partner

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Fleming, E., Ma, P. Drug life-cycle technologies. Nat Rev Drug Discov 1, 751–752 (2002). https://doi.org/10.1038/nrd926

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