The biotech era in late-stage drug R&D and mar­ket­ing has ar­rived. And it looks like it’s here to stay

In a new re­port out look­ing over the land­scape of drug R&D, IQVIA has been track­ing the swelling role that star­tups play in the de­vel­op­ment game. And some of the con­clu­sions may sur­prise you.

First and fore­most, the num­ber of ac­tive R&D com­pounds surged 37% in the 5 years from 2013 to 2018. And with biotechs able to op­er­ate in­creas­ing­ly in­de­pen­dent­ly of Big Phar­ma part­ners, the re­searchers de­ter­mined that emerg­ing com­pa­nies now con­trol 72% of the 2,853 late-stage drugs they tracked. 

That’s up from 65% of a much small­er set of 2,083 ther­a­pies in 2013 and 52% of the 1,383 drugs in late-stage de­vel­op­ment in 2003. And close to half of the new drugs ap­proved last year were launched by emerg­ing biotechs, in stark con­trast to the dom­i­na­tion large com­pa­nies once en­joyed in the mar­ket­ing are­na.

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