The business of finding better drugs that make you

The business of finding better drugs that make your own drugs, obsolete is actually business as usual. Sure, there are extensions of the patent like getting a pediatric indication or moving to another indication for example you are indicated for throat cancer, but you’ve done trials that yield an indication in pancreatic cancer, and that extends the patent life of your drug.

But what you are describing, also speaks to partnerships and buyouts. There’s not a lot of innovation that goes on in the basements of big Pharma. It used to be that way, but they found it easier to look at Small start up biotechs and evaluate them for some period, help them with their trials and eventually partner or buy them out to bring these new drugs into their fold. And many times this isn’t just to bring a new drug into their portfolio. It’s to phase out the old drugs, especially those that are going off patent.

So they have a commercial team with a salesforce and they’ve been selling a certain drug, but that drug is going off patent so they find a new drug from a small biotech and they either partner with that small company or they buy the drug outright and put it in the proverbial “bag” of the sales reps and let them loose to educate medical providers on why this new product is something that can benefit patients- features and benefits as they say along with any negative outcomes, including side effects, etc. Fair balance if you will.

That brings us to where I think we are which is in negotiations that have everyone signing an NDA and remaining quiet until signatures happen. And that my friend is when we know. Until then we scour the message boards.