The long-term outlook for the pharma drug development industry remains positive, with worldwide pharmaceutical R&D spend expected to grow by 2.4% (CAGR) to USD 181 billion in 2022, according to EvaluatePharma®. Importantly, dealmaking in the life sciences continues to be a seller’s market, with fierce competition among new buyers to gain dominance in top therapeutic areas. Sellers must consider unique partnering strategies and outsourcing scenarios, and the option to hold onto assets all the way through commercialization in some cases. This leads to the inevitable question, should sellers partner or go it alone?

The answer may be found in looking at growth forecasts for some of the industry’s hottest therapy areas.

A new report, “EvaluatePharma® World Preview 2017, Outlook to 2022,” takes a deep dive into the world’s financial markets and the expected performance of the industry between now and 2022. The report states that “prescription drug sales are forecast to grow at an impressive annual compound rate of 6.5%, eventually hitting USD 1.06 trillion worldwide in 2022. Much of this growth is set to come from some of the industry’s hottest therapy areas including new cancer immunotherapies like Opdivo and Keytruda, as well as much higher-risk assets like Biogen’s Alzheimer’s project aducanumab.”

This chart from the report shows the Top 10 Therapy Areas in 2022, Market Share & Sales Growth. Clearly, oncology is poised to remain the most dominant therapeutical area which can likely be attributed to the “an aging population—a cohort that cancer is most likely to affect,” according to Heather Morel, chief operating officer, The US Oncology Network, as quoted in the article “Watch list 2017: Top therapeutic areas” in Managed Healthcare® Executive.

This EvaluatePharma chart also notes a promising growth outlook for biosimilars in the antirheumatics segment and in second place, therapies to treat diabetes are forecast to be the biggest in sales.

BIO-Europe®  panel addresses commercialization opportunities

A panel discussion on this topic, entitled “Answering the million dollar question: Partner or go it alone?” is a feature at BIO-Europe® global life science partnering conference taking place in Berlin, Germany in November. Panelists, including Neel Patel, Managing Director at INC Research/inVentiv Health Consulting and Nerida Scott, VP, New Ventures and Transactions at J&J Innovation, will discuss the many opportunities available to sellers and considerations for making the decision between partnering and going it alone.

To find out more about opportunities for forging strategic partnerships with pharmaceutical companies and opportunities available to sellers, see the BIO-Europe event information page.