Comment by missedthecue

Of course it's sustainable. Gilead Sciences is a $155B company originally built on a single drug (Sovaldi) that literally cures Hepatitis C. Now they are more diversified and have a stacked pipeline. The business model just changes to one like oil or mining exploration where you find a deposit with a limited lifespan and you have to keep the treadmill going to find new ones before the mother lode that funds your firm is all tapped out and you go bust.

But while it makes for amazing ragebait and threads full of grievances aired against the healthcare system in general, I think the question isn't very relevant because in Biotech, this is dynamic already essentially forced, cure or not, because of *patent life*. A perfect example of this is Lipitor and Pfizer. Lipitor was not a cure. Statins do not cure you. But it was the most profitable drug of all time. But it eventually went off-patent and now the average price on GoodRX for a 30 day supply is only $6. Pfizer stock has never recovered from that success, though they certainly have a sustainable business.

The modern-day Pfizer is Merck. Merck has probably the most profitable drug in world history (Keytruda) which is far more profitable than Lipitor, and which has massively increased remission rates for a wide range of cancers, so it's somewhat of a cure as well. But that patent life is about to expire, and 46% of Mercks revenue will disappear with it. Of course, new people are diagnosed with cancer every day, and Keytruda will continue to be prescribed in the millions, but Teva and others will sell the generic version and Merck will lose out on the revenue. So the race is on to get more things through their pipeline, acquire some promising assets, and keep the treadmill going. There are 100+ year old mining and oil companies. None are mining the same asset they had one day one, but this doesn't make the industry unsustainable.