I was delighted to attend the half-day Citeline Elevate Commercial event, focused on the pharma and bioindustry commercial landscape. It combined fireside chats, data insights and case studies in an intimate Whitehall setting in central London.

Here are my 5 key-take aways:

1. Industry topline revenues are predicted to increase by 7.5% CAGR up to 2030 while internal R&D spend will decrease from 29% to 21% with the result of more externalisation of R&D activities. The market access landscape will become more hostile to new product launches [Daniel Chancellor, Norstella]

• Fewer assets [on average] are predicted to come from inhouse development due to declining success rates and R&D productivity. This in return will drive deal-making and externalisation of R&D spend.
• Increasing coverage burdens with US payers will put pressure on Pharma’s bottom line. Payers have learned how to control costs, i.e. tightening criteria for PAs (Prior Authorisations) and shifting burden to other players in the value chain. PBMs are anticipated to exercise more exclusions and providers will rely more on GPOs (Group Purchase Organisations) to counter 340B exposure and pressure on their GtN (Gross to Net)

2. More assets – higher attrition: Phase 1 asset likelihood of approval has dropped from 9.6% to 6.7% on average

• In 2023 the number of pipeline assets was 23k which was an all-time high and more than 1k Phase III trials were ongoing. While the future looks promising, however, with more assets comes higher attrition and the need to more effectively evaluate assets commercially at all stages of development and in particular those at earlier stages.

3. ‘We course correct every 90 days’ – How Dynamic Shared Ownership [DSO] gives a glimpse of Bayer’s new mantra on keeping [organisationally] fit and think long term ahead of a patent cliff

• Germany’s large pharma company is prescribing itself a new way of avoiding organisational silos and staying agile. Peter Cichon, VP, Business Development & Licensing shared its new vision of DSO, which will shape every function and level in the organisation.
• For 1 + 1 = 5, the focus moves to the Early Space where the company sees more opportunity to add value and leverage its experience in key franchises such as women’s health and ophthalmology. Arms-Length models shape its collaboration philosophy and acquisition activities.

4. ‘How can we AI this?’ – Tom Halliday and Vincent Spurr from Norstella illustrated their vision of future data analytics: Contextualising AI curated data for first-in-class and best-in-class treatments.
5. AI: Good for drug discovery but not so good for drug development?!? – Scrip’s Kevin Grogan, Simon Turner from Sofinnova and Rob Grundy from Intelligent Omics explored this question and they are not so sure this is true. Better, faster, cheaper patient recruitment and retention through AI is already being worked on.

• The discussion also highlighted that the desire to instil confidence in AI faces an interesting inherent paradox – the desire to protect AI’s IP is diametrically opposed to AI’s explainability. With this in mind, is the ‘black box’ argument resolvable?

For commercial analysis, get in touch
Erik Holzinger. Founder, groupH
erik.holzinger@grouph.com