AbbVie’s latest, largest acquisition may be cast in a new light as the pandemic throws stock markets into turmoil and commercial prospects up in the air.

The prices of biotechnology and pharmaceutical sector indices continue to be comparatively robust in the face of big falls in global markets as investors expect new drugs and vaccines to be generated by the sector. While it is largely accepted that the life science sector will eventually ride to the rescue, bumper profits are far from guaranteed.

Pharmaceutical shares are stronger than most as world stock markets dive downwards, but they are not immune to the coronavirus fallout. The effects will be felt by biopharma companies across many areas of their activity.

With the backdrop of Biogen’s BLA filing, and the FDA’s expected response for aducanumab in Alzheimer’s disease in 2020, the link between efficacy and approval seems to have broken. Conditional FDA approvals can’t help when the conditions are ignored.

After most of the big pharmaceutical companies reported their full-year 2019 financial results, the second month of earnings season brings the long tail of smaller biotech companies and the generic pharmaceutical companies. There is more than one uncomfortable parallel from the former in the reports of the latter.

The Coronavirus outbreak makes its first dent into pharma's 2020 prospects as AstraZeneca admits possible impact, while could AbbVie's aesthetic plans raise the prospect of another GSK-style spin off?