Comment by s1artibartfast
2 days ago
I don't think you are looking at this from the rational economic perspective.
I'm not talking about biosimilars or strict copycats.
Completely novel indications are a tiny portion of Pharma development.
Lucrative and technologically viable untreated indications are few and far between.
Meanwhile, you have huge proven markets for treatments that impact millions of people with corresponding Revenue.
If you are skeptical, you can simply go look at the development Pipelines for the top 10 pharmaceutical Giants and see how many of their new programs are for indications with existing treatments versus orphan.
In recent years, approximately one-third of all novel new drugs approved annually by the FDA have carried a Breakthrough Therapy Designation. This corresponds to drugs that claim a substantial improvement over the standard of care for their target disease.
Understood, I responded elsewhere that I read the Lowe article as talking about conceptual advances (ACE, HMG CoA), but I realize he's mixing both erstwhile untreated indications as well as biosimilars.