AbbVie, AZ, Pfizer and other giants are under pressure: forging future competitiveness, where is the bet?

On January 17, Pfizer revealed that it is establishing a partnership with the French company Novartis to develop an oral drug therapy against the new coronavirus to enhance future competitiveness
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At the beginning of 2022, the "sense of crisis" of multinational pharmaceutical companies is more urgent: Merck cooperated with Absci in early January, planning to use the latter's artificial intelligence-driven drug innovation platform for drug development.
The cooperation involves 3 targets, and the latter will be eligible for Up to $610 million in upfront and milestone payments, as well as research funding and tiered sales royalties
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On the same day, Sanofi partnered with Exscientia to co-develop up to 15 novel small molecule drug candidates in oncology and immunology through the latter's end-to-end AI-driven personalized medicine platform
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Sanofi made an upfront payment of $100 million, along with future research, translational, clinical development and commercial milestone payments totaling up to $5.
2 billion
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In addition, Eli Lilly, Novartis, and AZ also have new deployments
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Tens of billions of "patent cliffs" force JAK inhibitors and other prospects to be expected? In recent years, many multinational pharmaceutical companies are undergoing innovation and transformation.
Most of their "anxiety" about the future comes from the weak performance growth caused by the gradual arrival of the core product "patent cliff"
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Among them, AbbVie is quite representative, because the "patent cliff" of Humira (adalimumab) is coming in 2023
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Judging from its financial report information, mining new pivots is a top priority for AbbVie's earnings growth
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There are reports that AbbVie's JAK inhibitor Rinvoq (upatinib) and interleukin-23 antagonist Skyrizi are considered to be the new products that best fill the sales gap caused by Humira's "patent cliff"
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AbbVie recently released a forecast that by 2025, the total sales of the above two products is expected to reach 15 billion US dollars, and it can be seen that AbbVie has high hopes for it
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Getting it right, though: Rinvoq, a once-a-day, reversible JAK inhibitor, received a safety warning from the US FDA in December
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In fact, in the past two years, safety issues have emerged one after another with JAK inhibitors: in December 2021, in addition to AbbVie's Rinvoq, Pfizer's Xeljanz and Eli Lilly's Olumiant are also required to use new safety warnings and restrictions label
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In June of the same year, AbbVie's Rinvoq application for the treatment of psoriatic arthritis and ankylosing spondylitis was extended for the second time by the FDA
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It can be seen that JAK inhibitors still have a long way to go
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Nonetheless, JAK inhibitors remain in the spotlight
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Recently, Rinvoq was approved for new indications, and Pfizer's JAK1 inhibitor Cibinqo was also approved for marketing
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For such a popular target, many domestic and foreign companies are deploying research and development
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However, just like the concerns expressed by the industry at the JP Morgan conference a few days ago, the safety issue that cannot be avoided by JAK inhibitors is still the key to solving the problem
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From the perspective of patents, BMS has been greatly affected by it in the past two years
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The $74 billion acquisition of Celgene in 2019 brought Revlimid into the bag, and the drug will bring in $12.
15 billion in revenue in 2020
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Revlimid will usher in generic drug competition in 2022.
In order to hedge its impact, BMS has made layouts in TYK2 inhibitors and LAG-3 immuno-oncology drugs
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Facing a more severe challenge is Amgen, with nine of its star products whose patents expire between 2021 and 2030
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Taking the autoimmune disease treatment drug Otezla as an example, the analysis report shows that this product alone will directly lose 81% of its revenue between 2025 and 2030, and the loss amount is as high as 2.
7 billion US dollars
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During this period, Amgen's flagship products such as Enbrel, Prolia and Xgeva also needed to withstand more than 50% of the market share being eroded by generic drugs
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Due to these common pressures, pharmaceutical giants choose to lay out new directions
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At present, JAK inhibitors are a hot spot, including diamond target NTRK, popular target EGFR, MET, rare target KRAS, and research directions for CD19 targets, such as CAR-T, antibody drugs and ADC drugs, etc.
In full bloom
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A number of double-antibody projects have collapsed, and multinational pharmaceutical companies have done fancy "subtraction".
Double-antibody and nucleic acid drugs, as the hot track for multinational pharmaceutical companies to focus on, are not all smooth sailing
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In January 2021, LOXO, a subsidiary of Eli Lilly, announced a partnership with Merus to develop three CD3 double-antibody drugs
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Lilly's purpose is very clear, and it expects to quickly make up for its shortcomings in the field of precision medicine oncology treatment through acquisitions
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However, not long ago, the double antibody field encountered setbacks one after another: following the clinical failure of Merck's double antibody, Eli Lilly terminated the clinical development of two double antibody products, namely PD-L1/TIM-3 double antibody LY3321367 and IL-23 /CGRP double antibody project
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This casts a shadow over the future of double-resistant drugs
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The research and development of double antibody remains unabated
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On January 11, Sanofi and ABL Bio reached a cooperation agreement to jointly develop the latter's synuclein (SNCA)/IGF1R bispecific antibody ABL301 for the treatment of Parkinson's disease and other indications
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Sanofi paid $75 million upfront and $985 million in milestones
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Expert analysis shows that the drug-forming speed of double-antibody is significantly slower than that of other drug types because of design and production
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For example, when the technology was immature earlier, it can be said that the stable production of double antibodies was hindered by the mismatch of light and heavy chains, insufficient purity, and insufficient thermal stability.
Vanguard", it is worth continuing to observe
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In 2022, precise breakthrough should be another commonality of strategic contraction of multinational pharmaceutical companies
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Taking the Chinese market as an example, Pfizer sold the Hangzhou biopharmaceutical production base with an investment of more than 2 billion last year, which was built in less than three years; Eli Lilly sold the “blockbuster” Cialis brand in the Chinese mainland market for US$170 million.
rights
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Another big change is AstraZeneca (AZ).
Although its sales growth rate in the Chinese market is not bad, its performance in China in the third quarter of 2021 only increased by 2% year-on-year
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The price of the third-generation EGFR-TKI osimertinib was reduced by 70%.
In addition, in the fifth batch of centralized procurement, the AZ large-variety budesonide inhalation preparation lost the bid
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On December 16, 2021, AZ China announced that starting from January 1, 2022, on the one hand, the Hexian business will be split, and the Hexian oncology business will be merged into the oncology business department, and the non-tumor business will be independent and become the Hexian Chronic Disease Business Department.
On the other hand, the Cardiovascular and Metabolism Division and the Renal Business Division were merged to form the Cardiovascular, Renal and Metabolism Division
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On December 31, 2021, Junshi and AZ agreed to "break up", and Junshi withdrew the right to promote Toripalimab injection as agreed in the original agreement
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The last working day before Yin Min, the former general manager of China Oncology Division of AZ, was December 31, and he has been changed to the chief commercial officer of BeiGene Greater China
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The cooperation between Junshi Bio and AstraZeneca was reached on February 28, 2021, and the cooperation between the two parties is only 10 months
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In general, due to the reconstruction of the global pharmaceutical environment, multinational pharmaceutical companies have adjusted their strategies and talent structures on a large scale, and a new round of future strategic layout competition has quietly kicked off
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