DefinedHealth

Ed Saltzman

Ed Saltzman’s Feeding the Pipeline presentations began in 2000 to document the limitations of Big Pharma’s intense stampede for an incredibly shrinking number of late-stage product opportunities. Over the years, Ed’s presentation has evolved to examine the ever-increasing strategic challenges and responsibilities faced by Pharma and Biotech Licensing Executives. This year’s presentation, Feeding the Pipeline IV: A Licensing Complex will consider the role of L&BD executives within the current context of unprecedented challenges to the industry’s established business models.

It is well recognized that Big Pharma (as well as the handful of companies constituting Big Biotech) are mired in an R&D productivity funk. Patent expirations on mega-billion dollar drugs loom for many of the large pharmacos, and the blockbusters to replace them are nowhere to be found. At the same time, the dismal situation in the financial markets has prompted the reorientation of much of Biotech into a drug discovery and development mode, wherein rapidly dwindling cash is committed to advancing one or two drug candidates through mid-stage trials. Not surprisingly, the time to market and risk associated with such programs has led investors to demand a more rapid path to commercialization, thereby forcing biotech companies to look outward for product licensing or acquisition opportunities. Once in the hunting ground, they invariably meet up with their Pharma counterparts, and all roads seem to lead either to dust or to astronomic valuation multiples. Meanwhile, Specialty Pharma continues to pursue its “serial product acquisition model,” hoping to acquire more of Big Pharma’s so-called “non-strategic” assets to drive growth, despite the increasingly common wisdom that such products are limited in supply.

The next 5-10 years will be characterized by tremendous ferment within the Pharma-Biotech-Specialty Pharma complex as existing business models are necessarily repaired, rebuilt or replaced. Feeding the Pipeline IV: A Licensing Complex will consider: 1) foundational instabilities in the various business models within each of the various industry sectors (Big Pharma, Biotech, Specialty Pharma; 2) reactions within and among each of the sectors, which is driving the demand for products at all stages of development, and 3) the implications for remodeling and deal making within each individual sector, as well as for the entirety of the complex.