You are certainly right that a company does not HA
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Posted On: 06/05/2025 11:02:43 PM
Re: Carsmax177 #153881
You are certainly right that a company does not HAVE to market a drug that it buys, but for the cost that LL would be (10's of billions), I cannot see it being shelved unless it failed somewhere. See below (thank you, Chatgpt) for some info and it becomes clear that there really are not clear examples of a company spending huge money just to shelve something, again, unless it fails later. I asked it what is the most a company has spent to purposely shelve a drug. Seems the FTC doesn't like the practice either.
Based on the information available, identifying the absolute highest amount a company has spent to purposely shelve a drug acquired specifically to eliminate competition is difficult to pinpoint precisely due to the private nature of such deals and the potential difficulty in proving intent. However, some examples highlight this practice:
Mallinckrodt/Questcor: Mallinckrodt's acquisition of Questcor Pharma for $5.6 billion included a $100 million settlement with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) over claims that Questcor bought Synacthen Depot, a potential rival to their drug Acthar Gel, in 2013 with the intent of shelving it. Questcor was accused of steering the development of the acquired drug towards uses that wouldn't conflict with its own product. While the total acquisition cost was $5.6 billion, the settlement focused on the competitive harm of shelving the potential rival acquired for $100 million.
AbbVie/Stemcentrx: AbbVie acquired Stemcentrx for $10.2 billion in 2016, primarily for Rova-T, a drug candidate targeting small cell lung cancer. The drug later failed clinical trials and was officially abandoned (shelved) in 2019, leading to a $5.1 billion write-off related to the acquisition. This is a very high-cost example of an acquired drug being shelved, though the primary purpose wasn't necessarily anti-competitive but rather a failure to perform as expected in trials.
The practice of pharmaceutical companies acquiring potential competitors to prevent them from reaching the market (sometimes called "killer acquisitions"
has been studied. One study estimated that about 7% of pharma mergers and acquisitions between 1989 and 2011 were strategic purchases by large pharma to eliminate competition from smaller companies. The costs associated with these deals can be significant, but linking a specific large acquisition value directly to a documented case of purposeful shelving for competitive reasons is challenging.
Therefore, while there are confirmed instances like the Mallinckrodt/Questcor case where a rival drug was acquired and shelved for anti-competitive reasons (associated with a $100 million settlement for the specific shelving activity), and larger acquisitions where drugs were later shelved due to failure (like AbbVie/Stemcentrx), the specific highest cost directly attributed to purposeful shelving of an acquired drug to block competition is not definitively established by the search results.
Based on the information available, identifying the absolute highest amount a company has spent to purposely shelve a drug acquired specifically to eliminate competition is difficult to pinpoint precisely due to the private nature of such deals and the potential difficulty in proving intent. However, some examples highlight this practice:
Mallinckrodt/Questcor: Mallinckrodt's acquisition of Questcor Pharma for $5.6 billion included a $100 million settlement with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) over claims that Questcor bought Synacthen Depot, a potential rival to their drug Acthar Gel, in 2013 with the intent of shelving it. Questcor was accused of steering the development of the acquired drug towards uses that wouldn't conflict with its own product. While the total acquisition cost was $5.6 billion, the settlement focused on the competitive harm of shelving the potential rival acquired for $100 million.
AbbVie/Stemcentrx: AbbVie acquired Stemcentrx for $10.2 billion in 2016, primarily for Rova-T, a drug candidate targeting small cell lung cancer. The drug later failed clinical trials and was officially abandoned (shelved) in 2019, leading to a $5.1 billion write-off related to the acquisition. This is a very high-cost example of an acquired drug being shelved, though the primary purpose wasn't necessarily anti-competitive but rather a failure to perform as expected in trials.
The practice of pharmaceutical companies acquiring potential competitors to prevent them from reaching the market (sometimes called "killer acquisitions"
has been studied. One study estimated that about 7% of pharma mergers and acquisitions between 1989 and 2011 were strategic purchases by large pharma to eliminate competition from smaller companies. The costs associated with these deals can be significant, but linking a specific large acquisition value directly to a documented case of purposeful shelving for competitive reasons is challenging. Therefore, while there are confirmed instances like the Mallinckrodt/Questcor case where a rival drug was acquired and shelved for anti-competitive reasons (associated with a $100 million settlement for the specific shelving activity), and larger acquisitions where drugs were later shelved due to failure (like AbbVie/Stemcentrx), the specific highest cost directly attributed to purposeful shelving of an acquired drug to block competition is not definitively established by the search results.
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