On the edge: Here comes the $550B cliff fall

Up to A$550 billion (US$450 billion) worth of pharma revenue is about to fall off a patent cliff, a former Country Medical Director has warned. And some companies are about to lose huge slices of their income.

Between now and 2030, between US$200 billion and US$400 billion of branded pharma revenue will become legally contestable, Pedro Salguerio, Roche’s former Country Medical Director for Ukraine, wrote on LinkedIn last week.

That’s “revenue with an expiry date printed on it”, he said, while warning that the number one pharma in R&D spending was the pharma that was about to lose the most. Keytruda makes up 56 per cent of MSD’s revenue, Salguerio calculated, “and its US compound patent expires December 2028. First the price negotiations bite in January of that year ... then the biosimilars come.”