Mehta Analysis: Shaming Biopharma managers

President Kennedy successfully persuaded US steel industry executives to manage their price increases responsibly for the collective good by shaming them from his pulpit. Would such a bully pulpit offer an effective answer to balancing the biopharma budgets? Let us fast forward two generations from the early 1960s to assess what has changed. First, self-interest has gained primacy today, at the same time as bipartisan decorum and the sense of common good have declined. The ability to publicly shame an…

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Mehta Analysis: Biopharma’s 10% Myth

There’s a prevailing narrative that drug spending is a relatively minor 10% of overall healthcare spending in the US.  Like most narratives, this isn’t completely wrong, but it ignores a relatively big portion of spending on drugs: those drugs that are administered in a hospital or clinic and get billed under a patient’s medical benefit plan, rather than the drug benefit portion of their insurance.  Taking those hospital administered drugs, and other such direct distribution channels into account, the biopharma…

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Mehta Analysis: Disrupt or be Disrupted

Many industries are being profoundly disrupted by IT. The survival of the publishing industry is in question as ad rates have plummeted in response to data and content transparency in the digital world. Digital technology has enabled pricing transparency that is fundamentally shifting spending patterns in travel, entertainment, transportation and many other industries. The biopharma industry so far has not felt too much heat—thanks to the complexity of its business. (Also see "Six Questions For McKinsey's Fox On Pharma's Digital…

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Sun Pharma enters Japanese Prescription Market

Novartis and Sun Pharma agreed to a novel transaction conceptualized by MP team. Sun Pharma acquired 14 long-listed brands in Japan from Novartis for a total cash consideration of $293 million (see Press Release below). MP Advisors, led by Tarun Shah, solved a challenge facing many biopharma companies—how to establish a significant presence in Japan that will create a sustainable and growing infrastructure. MP team is well-positioned to help you solve such challenges in capturing global growth opportunities, from major…

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Innovation Rising

Citizens are increasingly taking responsibility for their health, and convergence of IT and life sciences is accelerating this pace. Value for money from healthcare spending is increasingly the call of the day, which has managed to noticeably stem healthcare inflation in the US. Improving standards in the emerging markets, on the other hand, are accelerating healthcare spending, but largely on generic drugs. For the biopharma industry, biologics helped it come out of the small molecule generic carnage of the last…

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Hepatitis C Virus Infection

The launch of Protease inhibitors’ (PIs) created a wave in 2011-12 and accelerated the pace of innovation and impressive Sustained Virologic Response (SVR) rates by oral IFN free drug combinations have raised the bar and the expectations of pts, physicians and investors. Freedom from IFN, treating all genotypes and betting on vaccines could bring a sea of change in the HCV therapy class area in the future. Roche set the trend with the acquisition of Anadys for total of $230m…

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Developing “Better Biologics” through “Evergreening “= High Value Proposition

Investment in biologics based medicine is gaining momentum as these drugs offer targeted therapy and often safer treatment options, higher returns on investment and slower erosion of market share post patent expiry compared to small molecule based drugs. First Generation Monoclonal antibody based drugs are the cornerstone of treatment of major diseases (RA, MS, cancers, AMD, etc). As the patents for these 1st generation Mabs are set to expire from 2014 onwards we focus on companies with novel technology platforms…

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Japan’s New Government Signals Diminishing Outlook for Generics

Proposals on healthcare reforms, discussed at a high level meeting (DPJ’s Chairman with officials of MHLW (Korosho) & Ministry of Finance) in Japan last week, suggest a severe price cut in April 2010 and significant changes in the pricing policy of long-listed drugs. While still early, these developments indicate a difficult path for generic companies in particular and all companies with high long-listed drug exposure in general. This calls for a fresh look at the DPJ-led government: will they continue…

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The Taming of the Swine Flu

Throughout history the unpredictability of the Flu Virus has offered challenges and new opportunities to providers of therapeutic and prophylactic antiviral treatment options. While opportunities during the Spanish Flu of 1918 pandemic were not quantifiable, the impact from the more recent Bird Flu and SARS occurrences can be extrapolated to assess the investment opportunity surrounding the Swine (H1N1) flu pandemic. Tamiflu sales in 2005-2007 amounted to ~$1.7b and we expect 2009-2010 sales to match or exceed this. One notable difference between Bird…

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ADA Takes to the Streets in New Orleans

Enthusiasm for the host of clinical data released at the ongoing American Diabetes Association (ADA, June 5-9) meeting has simmered down as the FDA’s long-term safety concerns will weigh heavily on whether these drugs will actually make it to market. New data on weekly versions of GLP-1’s, Phase II data from Roche’s aleglitazar, and data for a novel class of drugs that aim to treat diabetes by blocking IL-1β were all important developments in the fight against diabetes, but they are unlikely…

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