Who buys orphan drug programs? Rare disease–
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Rare disease–focused startups and bioentrepreneurs who might be thinking about launching an orphan drug company need to know which pharmaceutical and biotech companies have interest in the orphan space. We identified the companies that received the most FDA-designated ODNs in 2008–2012 and also included their assigned ODNs from the European Medicines Agency (EMA) (http://ec.europa.eu/health/documents/community-register/html/orphreg.htm) (Fig. 4a). Novartis is a clear winner in both Europe and the United States, and it also ranks first in terms of orphan drug revenues (www.evaluategroup.com/orphandrug2013), followed by GlaxoSmithKline, Roche and Pfizer. Surprisingly, we found a large difference in the number of ODNs with the FDA and EMA for some big pharma companies. For instance, Roche has 15 ODNs with the FDA but none with the EMA.
http://www.nature.com/bioent/2014/140201/full...014.1.html