Pharmaceutical industry to face unprecedented patent expiries : EvaluatePharma data

The pharmaceutical sector is facing an unprecedented period of patent expiries when mega-blockbusters including Pfizer’s Lipitor, Bristol-Myers Squibb‘s Plavix and Eli Lilly’s Zyprexa will be exposed to cheap, generic drugs.

While this is good news in terms of lowering healthcare bills, these companies are facing the loss of hugely profitable franchises.

By 2016, medicines that generate sales of $133bn for their manufacturers in the US alone will be exposed to generics, and in 2012 drugs worth $33.2bn will lose patent protection- more than double this year’s figure.

Generics will enter the US market later this year.