Scrip Perspectives

Comirnaty was the industry’s top-selling product through the first three quarters of 2022, as in 2021, but Paxlovid proved a fast riser while Comirnaty and Moderna’s Spikevax saw declining sales. Pfizer's two COVID-19 products netted £46bn in total.

The hard going could get even tougher as a funding crunch continues for China’s biotech sector, which is being hit by a paradox that could see more pain ahead, leading investors to take the pulse of the sector as the Year of the Rabbit starts.

Scrip spotlights the action around five key big pharma products in India. We track the gains made by Rybelsus and Keytruda, the wave of Januvia and Ibrance generics and on-market and court action for blockbuster Entresto.

Scrip surveys the Phase III clinical trial readout landscape and picks 10 of the more interesting studies set to report in 2023, with a few added extras. AstraZeneca, Novo Nordisk, Novartis and Roche feature heavily.

Many of the same factors that held down large M&A transactions in 2021 carried over to 2022, which saw eight buyouts valued at $2bn+, headlined by Amgen’s $27.8bn purchase of Horizon.

India had a busy deals calendar in 2022, with companies led by Biocon striking large M&A deals while PE activity declined. Scrip pieced together data for infographics on these deals. A multitude of factors is expected to keep the momentum going in 2023

Drug makers have sought to branch into new frontiers of drug development in areas like cancers and neurology, but not all of them have been success stories. Here, Scrip looks at some of the more notable clinical trial misses of last year.

Any given year sees a variety of clinical trials produce positive or negative results. But some of those trials are especially important either for moving a field forward or for a company’s overall development and commercial strategy. Here, Scrip looks at some of the more notable trial successes of the last year.

After a comparatively subdued 2022 in terms of M&A and other deal-making, a strengthening currency and interest in new areas such as digital tools and cell and gene therapy might see a rebound in activity this year, which should also see domestic approvals of several potential blockbusters and more support for bioventures. 

Now the pandemic-era biotech boom is over, biopharma companies and investors are both adjusting their financing strategies to survive and even thrive in the new environment.

The short-notice reopening of the country made 2022 a tough year for the health sector in China, where divestments, cash crunches and commercial challenges abounded. Throughout the year, despite clinical trial activity continuing to blossom, multiple Chinese innovative drug developers faced setbacks in the US from regulatory rejections of oncology products. Meanwhile, others quietly scaled back their operations in China, hit by the negative impact of deep price cuts.

The past year witnessed only one major acquisition of a Chinese biotech by a major pharma company. However, some established firms such as Hansoh have set a new course for collaboration with much smaller peers by in-licensing preclinical assets.