How biologics are changing Europe's pharma companies

The era of 'Big Pharma' is over and companies are transitioning to more complex biological products, explains Tim Crockford from Hermes Sourcecap.

Empire building The pharmaceutical industry has been through a lot of change over the past three decades. Having initially built critical mass through patent-protected blockbuster drugs, pharmaceutical companies set out to diversify their product portfolios and pump their research and development budgets up. This quickly evolved into an empire building exercise, but patents expired, and management were faced with a drop-off in sales, as R&D failed to deliver new products that could compensate for lost revenues from legacy drugs. Pharma 3.0 The industry is now at a crossroads,...