The Novartis swine flu vaccine Celtura
Once spurned by drugmakers as low-margin and risky, vaccines to fight diseases such as H1N1 are now a growing business for Novartis and others.
The Resurgence of Vaccines
'It wasn't too long ago that vaccines were deemed the poor relation of the pharmaceutical industry. Their complexity and high manufacturing cost -- coupled with relatively low margins and risk of major litigation -- deterred all but a handful of players, including Novartis, Britain's GlaxoSmithKline, France's Sanofi Aventis, New Jersey's Merck, and Wyeth -- now a unit of Pfizer.
More recently, though, there's been something of a vaccine renaissance. That's partly because the industry is now facing serious challenges to its core prescription drug business. Some $135 billion in prescription drug sales will lose patent protection in the next five years, and there's little in drug companies' pipelines to replace those sales, says IMS Health consultant Alan Sheppard.'
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