Novartis drug pipeline voted industry's 'most innovative'

MANILA, Philippines - With 87 new drugs or vaccines under development and a leading focus on therapies that address rare diseases, research-based Swiss healthcare company Novartis has been selected by the pharmaceutical business and marketing news magazine Med Ad News as having the industry’s most innovative drug pipeline. 

“The pharmaceutical industry’s track record in producing new therapies that improve on existing standards of care continues to sputter amid growing R&D (research and development) challenges,” Med Ad News said in its 2010 Top 10 Pipelines report.

According to the report, 21 new molecular entities were approved by the US Food and Drug Administration, but only six were developed by major pharmaceutical companies in 2008.

In 2007, those numbers were 19 and five, respectively.

From 2000 to September 2009, Novartis produced the most number of new molecular entities at 19.

A drug pipeline is the set of drug compounds that a pharmaceutical company has under development at any given point in time.

The development of drugs generally involves three stages: pre-clinical trials, clinical trials, and marketing (or post-approval).

The cost of developing a new drug usually runs up to hundreds of millions of dollars over at least a decade.

The drug pipeline is an important indicator of the value and future prospects of a pharmaceutical company. Usually the more compounds in the pipeline, and the more advanced stage that these are in, the better the company’s prospects are.

“The R&D investment of Novartis is one of the highest in the industry. We are committed to creating a best-in-class pipeline over the next five years,” said Eric van Oppens, president and CEO of Novartis Healthcare Philippines.

“Our drug discovery and development efforts are focused on the patient. In developing drugs, we are guided by an understanding of the underlying mechanism or cause of a disease and whether this disease represents a significant unmet medical need in patients,” said Dr. Francis Domingo, chief scientific officer of Novartis Healthcare Philippines.

Med Ad News partly blamed the scarcity of desired drug candidates on a “starving of innovation” in the early stages of drug development.

“Much of the void is attributed to venture funding cuts in the biotechnology sector driven by the poor economy, and a dearth of new startup companies whose focus is purely on novel research,” it said.

Med Ad News is one of the publications of US-based Canon Communications Pharmaceutical Media Group. Launched in 1982, it has been the magazine of choice for insights into successful business and marketing strategies.