What’s trending for pharma in 2020

EPM speaks to key players in the pharma industry to find out what will be trending in 2020. 

Biosimilars

The biosimilars market is expected to contribute to cost savings in the US pharmaceutical industry this year, according to a new report by GlobalData.

The report predicts that biosimilars will gain a strong foothold in the US due to the expiration of a number of biological patents. In particular, pharmaceutical companies will be looking to build on the success of seen by Amgen and Pfizer’s biosimilar strategies.

Bonnie Bain, global head of pharma at GlobalData, said: “Even though the price differential between biosimilars and their branded counterparts is only around 15%-30%, which is significantly less than the cost savings seen with the average generic drug, we still expect that biosimilars will start to contribute cost-savings in the US in 2020. Uncertainty still exists for reimbursement, automatic substitution, competition from next-generation biologics and litigation but the fact that insurers such as United Healthcare placed Amgen’s biosimilar mAbs on the primary tier of its formulary bodes well for future biosimilars.”

Outsourcing

Pharmaceutical companies will continue looking towards specialists to diversify their offerings to customers and enable them to focus more on in-house activities.

Andrew Henderson, sales and marketing director at Sterling says: “It’s likely that both the outsourcing and M&A trends will continue into 2020 as the CDMO market becomes increasingly more competitive in these areas. As big pharma firms are likely to continue outsourcing non-core requirements to specialists, it will be interesting to see how CDMOs continue to develop their capabilities to provide customers with better services and meet demand.”

Diversity

Diversity is an area in which the life sciences industry struggles and this problem extend to clinical trials.

Indeed, Christian Hebenstreit, senior VP and general manager, EMEA at Medidata - a Dassault Systèmes company - says that “only 3% of patients have access to participate in clinical trials (and therefore access to potentially life-saving drugs).”

“This is due to a range of factors – lack of knowledge, geographical location, financial constraints, background or ethnicity – and means that certain groups are massively underrepresented. This is something that the industry needs to address on a global scale immediately as it will lead to flawed and misrepresentative clinical outcomes,” he adds.

A focus on the patient

Patients are at the core of what drives the pharmaceutical industry, but historically, they haven’t been factored into how clinical trials operate. 

Sascha Sonnenberg, global head of business development at Sharp Clinical Services, says: “Patient centricity is for sure the biggest trend the industry is following. Having a well-defined strategy in this area will assure patients are recruited and stay engaged in a compliant and adherent way in clinical trials.

“First and foremost for pharma companies and sponsors, patient-centric trials practices will help them make savings - faster recruitment and lower drop-out rates will shorten trials and deliver earlier revenue streams. There is also a groundswell of regulatory focus and support for patient-centricity with the FDA in particular showing a keen interest in understanding how this model can help bring therapies to patients more quickly and efficiently.”