Why do foreign pharmaceutical companies sell patent expired drugs frequently?

July 25th news recently, according to internal news, the newly established product line of Pfizer Upjohn that has passed the patent period has been confirmed for sale Pfizer puqiang is the first foreign enterprise department with a global management team in China It owns 20 mature pharmaceutical brands with Pfizer covering multiple disease areas and the most iconic, including Lipitor, loxorubicin, Celebrex, lerika, Zoloft, eNOS, drolidine, etc., which we are familiar with Among them, atorvastatin and amlodipine besylate are the "lock-in" varieties purchased with "4 + 7" volume, while Lipitor and luohuoxi, the heavyweight products, are all defeated in the first batch of bidding, which are inferior to similar products of domestic generic pharmaceutical enterprises With the implementation of "4 + 7" volume procurement, in addition to the extrusion of a large number of high price generic shares, the original research shares are also facing erosion and price reduction losses For Pfizer, which has high-quality original research drugs and accumulated reputation and market for many years, it can not escape such impact Taking atorvastatin (20mg) in Shanghai as an example, HMAS of China Medical Industry Information Center Hospital shows that since the implementation of "4 + 7" centralized collection on March 20, only Pfizer and Beijing Jialin are left in the overall market of Shanghai Among them, Beijing Jialin's market share is constantly increasing, and the first-class hospital The increase of its dosage is the most obvious In fact, in the face of price and quantity double killing, it has become a common choice for quite a number of old foreign pharmaceutical companies in China to cut "old drugs" and move "new drugs" Many foreign pharmaceutical companies then "start" the business of patent expired drugs At the end of 2018, it was reported that Lilly pharmaceutical was considering selling the expired patent medicine business in China to raise funds to promote the R & D and listing of other products with faster growth According to the news, Lilly is evaluating the market of antibiotics and CNS At present, the patents of the CNS products, such as Prozac (fluoxetine hydrochloride), zapraline (olanzapine), xinbaida (duloxetine hydrochloride), and sestar (tormoxitine hydrochloride), have expired On April 23 this year, Lilly action came to the ground, announcing the signing of an agreement with Yiteng pharmaceutical to sell the rights of its antibiotic products, hickory and reliable in mainland China, as well as its production plant in Suzhou On July 8, Chongqing Yaoyou pharmaceutical, a subsidiary of Fosun Pharmaceutical, signed a purchase agreement with GSK The agreement shows that Chongqing Yaoyou plans to purchase 100% equity of GSK wholly-owned subsidiary GlaxoSmithKline Pharmaceutical (Suzhou) Co., Ltd with no more than 250 million yuan After the completion of the equity transfer, Fosun Pharmaceutical and Chongqing Yaoyou will hold the drug registration approval documents of lamivudine tablets for the treatment of chronic hepatitis B and the production license and GMP certificate of the production facilities AstraZeneca As early as February 2016, AstraZeneca transferred the exclusive sales rights of boyiding (felodipine sustained release tablets) and imdo (isosorbide mononitrate sustained release tablets) to kangzhe Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd.; then in October 2016, AstraZeneca transferred the Chinese franchises of type 2 diabetes GLP-1 receptor agonist baibida (exenatide) and three dosage forms of baidayan (exenatide sustained release tablets) The business right was transferred to Sansheng pharmaceutical, including the marketing team of baipida; in October 2018, LVYE pharmaceutical purchased the promotion, marketing, distribution and sale or manufacturing rights of the schizophrenia drugs seroquel (quetiapine) and seroquel XR (sustained release tablets) of AstraZeneca in the designated areas for us $538 million In the past two years, China's market is undergoing great changes due to policy changes In the bidding process, foreign pharmaceutical enterprises have encountered collective bid abandonment and price reduction due to high pricing, especially under the "4 + 7" and drug price negotiation policies, the pricing and sales strategies of traditional drugs by foreign pharmaceutical enterprises have to be changed It can be said that the profits of many blockbuster products in the Chinese market are falling precipitously and irreversibly Recently, the Symposium on "4 + 7 centralized procurement and expansion enterprises" organized by the State Health Insurance Bureau revealed that the next round of centralized procurement will still be based on 25 varieties selected from "4 + 7", and will be expanded from the previous 11 pilot cities to the nationwide implementation of procurement The government expects to realize the substitution of generic drugs for original research drugs that have passed the patent period nationwide In the future, the market share of generic drugs through consistency evaluation will be increased rapidly, and import substitution will be accelerated Therefore, multinational pharmaceutical enterprises will be impacted and faced with the choice of quantity and price It can be predicted that in the future, mature drugs are facing a strong impact of generic drugs in the Chinese market, and the generic drugs passing the consistency evaluation will be more competitive The biggest challenge for the unsuccessful brand of original research drugs is channel transfer and price maintenance management They either sell at a reduced price or transfer the right to sell drugs to local Chinese pharmaceutical companies For domestic enterprises, the introduction of mature products can expand cash flow, supplement product lines, strengthen key technologies, and improve the competitiveness of competitive areas Generally speaking, market shuffling is becoming more and more fierce Only by adapting to rules and adjusting strategies can we find a way out!