Explore recent issues of Contract Pharma covering key industry trends.
Read the full digital version of our magazine online.
Stay informed! Subscribe to Contract Pharma for industry news and analysis.
Get the latest updates and breaking news from the pharmaceutical and biopharmaceutical industry.
Discover the newest partnerships and collaborations within the pharma sector.
Keep track of key executive moves and promotions in the pharma and biopharma industry.
Updates on the latest clinical trials and regulatory filings.
Stay informed with the latest financial reports and updates in the pharma industry.
Expert Q&A sessions addressing crucial topics in the pharmaceutical and biopharmaceutical world.
In-depth articles and features covering critical industry developments.
Access exclusive industry insights, interviews, and in-depth analysis.
Insights and analysis from industry experts on current pharma issues.
A detailed look at the leading US players in the global pharmaceutical and BioPharmaceutical industry.
Browse companies involved in pharmaceutical manufacturing and services.
Comprehensive company profiles featuring overviews, key statistics, services, and contact details.
A comprehensive glossary of terms used in the pharmaceutical and biopharmaceutical industry.
Watch in-depth videos featuring industry insights and developments.
Listen to expert discussions and interviews in pharma and biopharma.
Download in-depth eBooks covering various aspects of the pharma industry.
Access detailed whitepapers offering analysis on industry topics.
View and download brochures from companies in the pharmaceutical sector.
Explore content sponsored by industry leaders, providing valuable insights.
Stay updated with the latest press releases from pharma and biopharma companies.
Explore top companies showcasing innovative pharma solutions.
Meet the leaders driving innovation and collaboration.
Engage with sessions and panels on pharma’s key trends.
Hear from experts shaping the pharmaceutical industry.
Join online webinars discussing critical industry topics and trends.
A comprehensive calendar of key industry events around the globe.
Live coverage and updates from major pharma and biopharma shows.
Find advertising opportunities to reach your target audience with Contract Pharma.
Review the editorial standards and guidelines for content published on our site.
Understand how Contract Pharma handles your personal data.
View the terms and conditions for using the Contract Pharma website.
What are you searching for?
1 Dna Way South San Francisco, California 94080 US
We’re passionate about finding solutions for people facing the world’s most difficult-to-treat conditions. That is why we use cutting-edge science to create and deliver innovative medicines around the globe. To us, science is personal.
Making a difference in the lives of millions starts when you make a change in yours. If you
Headcount: 11,000 Biopharma Revenues: $10,531 (+12%) Royalty Revenues: $2,539 (+28%) Total Revenues: $13,418 (+14%) Net Income: $3,427 (+24%) R&D Budget: $2,800 (+14%)
Account for 84% of total pharma sales, same as in 2007.
PROFILE
So long, Genentech! It was nice having you at #2 all these years! Last year, majority owner Roche launched a bid to buy out the remaining shares of Genentech and fold it into Roche. It took eight months of negotiations and revised during the worldwide financial collapse, but Genentech finally merged with Roche in March 2009 for a payment of around $47 billion. Given the standards of how I count biopharma revenues, it appears that the new Roche will become #1 on next year’s Top 10 Biopharma list.
And one final company making its last appearance, thanks to Roche and the wonderful climate that the drug industry has found itself in. Genentech is biotech royalty, for sure, so seeing them swallowed up whole has been something of a shock (notwithstanding that they took a brief journey through the inside of that same whale at one point).
I really hope that we’re not saying goodbye, but it’s too early to say. There have to be more changes coming — for one thing, you have to wonder what’s going to happen to their small-molecule people, since that’s not (historically) their strength, nor what Roche was presumably paying for. Give it a couple of years or so.
And there’s one of the central problems of this industry — the changes we make take a long time to have an effect, and the attention of the investors is relatively short. (That could probably be rendered more concisely in Latin). And by the time we’re sure that some strategy hasn’t worked it, it’s been in place for years. Let’s hope that the Genentech acquisition doesn’t end up in that bin. . .—Derek Lowe
Unlike the other major mergers in this year’s edition, Genentech wasn’t simply a pipeline-grab. Roche actually seems intent on making Genentech the U.S. face (and name) of the company, with plans to move its commercial operations H.Q. into Genentech’s South San Francisco site, and to retain that site’s research and early development campus as an independent center. Roche predicts $750 to $850 million in “synergies,” so I’m sure we’ll see a ton of layoffs affecting both sides of the company.
Some changes have already been made, and they highlight the issues Roche’s may face as it tries to spread Genentech’s biotech mojo throughout the entire company. The question we all have is: Is mojo spreadable?
On the one hand, the WSJ Health Blog quoted William Burns, Roche’s chief executive officer of pharmaceuticals, on the synergies of the merger: “There was considerable biomarker data on some of the products that was not shared in the collaboration because it could result in future intellectual property. So now having the legal infrastructure protecting the outer walls of the family and not cutting across one member of the family, will allow a much broader transparency and sharing of that data.”
On the other hand, how do you retain the talent that fueled Genentech’s success? A few weeks after the deal was finalized, Genentech chief executive officer Art Levinson, stepped down. He was named chairman of Genentech’s board, a nominee for Roche’s board, and an advisor on research. Will he be able (and willing) to exert the same influence he once had on Genentech’s development teams?
In May, Susan Desmond-Hellmann, Genentech’s president of product development, was named chancellor of University of California, San Francisco. She’s regarded as a key figure in the company’s success in cancer treatments, and was supposed to be a member of the new Genentech’s Scientific Resource Board. Will her new role at UCSF remove her from Genentech’s orbit?
The Friend of my NME?
If there’s one knock I have on Genentech, it’s the company’s dearth of late-stage drugs. That’s a pretty nitpicky point, given the incredible success its key products are enjoying, and the new indications that are getting approved for powerhouse Avastin (as well as positive results for Rituxan, Herceptin and Tarceva).
It’s not as though Genentech wasn’t cognizant of the need for new drugs in its pipeline, before the merger. As part of its “Horizon 2010” plan (which did not include “get bought out by Roche”), the company wanted to get at least 20 NMEs into the clinic. But one of the other goals was “bring at least 15 major new products or indications onto the market,” (emphasis mine) which gave them plenty of room to talk about productivity without getting new drugs approved. They’re doing a great job with the new indications, but the company’s Phase III pipeline is stuffed with Avastin trials, and there aren’t so many prospects in the former group.
As I mentioned in Roche’s profile, Avastin failed in a clinical trial for early-stage colon cancer. Adding that indication would’ve opened it up to a huge new market and further cemented the company as tops in cancer treatments. Still, Avastin did managed to win accelerated approval for brain cancer in May 2009, and is involved in, according to Genentech, 450 trials against 30 different tumor types.
I guess I’m just carping. Genentech comported itself pretty well in its final year as an independent, posting double-digit sales growth and featuring a trio of billion-dollar biologics. It was never going to catch up to Amgen for the top slot, but Genentech can take consolation in
blowing Amgen out of the water with combined bio-revenues in next year’s edition.
Headcount: 11,000 Biopharma Revenues: $9,443 (+24%) Royalty Revenues: $1,984 (+26%) Total Revenues: $11,724 (+47%) Net Income: $2,769 (+31%)
R&D Budget: $2,446 (+38%)
Account for 84% of total pharma sales, down from 87% in 2006.
With Amgen in the doldrums, is Genentech in position to close the gap? Not exactly. The perennial #2 on our list posted great numbers for 2007, but growth slowed in 1Q08 as a key product ran into some unique difficulties.
In last year’s profile, I explained how Lucentis, Genentech’s treatment for wet age-related macular degeneration (AMD), was facing competition from its own precursor, Avastin. It seems doctors were willing to use repackaged Avastin as a replacement for Lucentis, saving about $1,960 per $2,000 dose of Lucentis. Genentech blew a gasket when this practice came up, and tried to restrict Avastin sales from compounding pharmacies, which were doing the actual repackaging.
Genentech used to be “one of the” biggest and most powerful biotech companies — but Avastin’s success and Amgen’s recent problems are beginning to remove all the qualifying phrases. The company keeps throwing around numbers in the dozens for the drugs that they’re advancing to the clinic in the next few years, which makes you wonder where they’re going to find all the clinicians (and all the patients). But gather ye rosebuds while ye may: this is the time to do it, when the money is rolling in, and hope that the hit rate will be high enough to keep the party going.
A strong development pipeline can only help them out when that biogeneric revolution does get around to occurring. Biotech companies will then have to live off their wits, like their small-molecule brethren, with patent expirations ticking away in the background the whole time. From the look of it, Genentech is doing a better job than some of preparing for that particular asteroid.
—Derek Lowe
In December 2007, Genentech reached a compromise with two ophthalmologists’ societies; they were allowed to order Avastin themselves and have it delivered to compounding pharmacies, but the pharmacies themselves could no longer order it. Lucentis sales were $815 million in its first full year, but 1Q08 numbers dipped from $211 million to $198 million, hurt by Avastin substitutions. If that $800 million range turns out to be the peak for Lucentis, Genentech’s going to be one unhappy company.
There’s a side story about Genentech’s restrictions on switching Avastin for Lucentis. In that version, the FDA inspected Genentech’s Avastin manufacturing site and questioned the safety of the drug’s preparation in ocular use. According to the company, it increased its visual inspection standards and determined that four lots were not suitable for use in the eye (but were just fine for anticancer indications). Because of this failure to meet standards for an off-label use it doesn’t approve of, Genentech said it destroyed 350,000 vials of Avastin with a market price in excess of $200 million.
According to Jacob Goldstein at the Wall Street Journal’s Health Blog, FDA called shenanigans on that claim, and declared that the lots would not have been suitable in any indications, including oncology, because of microscopic levels of glass found in the vials. The implication is that those lots of Avastin were flat-out defective, and the company used the controversy over the Lucentis switch to justify destroying the lots. Genentech disagreed with that assessment.
If there’s an upside to this, it’s that the switch contributed a little to Avastin revenues, were up 32% in 2007. That growth rate made Avastin Genentech’s top performer last year, squeaking past Rituxan.
April turned out to be the cruelest month for Rituxan trials. In April 2008, Genentech and partner Biogen Idec announced that Rituxan had failed trials in both primary progressive multiple sclerosis (PPMS) and Lupus. On Ed Silverman’s excellent blog Pharmalot (www.pharmalot.com), he ran the following assessment of Avastin’s two April failures, courtesy of Jim Reddoch, a biotech analyst with Friedman, Billings & Ramsey:
“The negative result has implications beyond Rituxan. Genentech has been developing a second-generation anti-CD20 antibody (same mechanism as Rituxan, currently in Phase III for RA and Phase II for MS). This drug is being developed as a more benign version of Rituxan for use in patients with non-life-threatening conditions, including the autoimmune diseases.“The fact that Rituxan, the more potent drug, was unable to meet a single endpoint in this trial, and failed in PPMS, does not instill confidence in the prospects for the next-generation version. This removes another potential growth area from a company that is in dire need of them, as the company’s other drivers are slowing.”
The Avastin news hasn’t been all bad. In February, the FDA approved Avastin with Paclitaxel chemotherapy for first-line treatment of breast cancer. The approval was a bit surprising, since a December 2007 advisory committee meeting recommended against the new indication, 5-4. Analysts believe that the new indication will lead to another bump in Avastin sales, but they also note that the drug will face greater competition from ImClone’s Erbitux, which will seek expansions into first-line head and neck cancer approval in mid-2008, lung cancer in 4Q08 and colon cancer in 1Q09.
Genentech’s runner-up status in our Top 10 list looks secure for another year, but any hope of climbing to #1 on our list are pipe(line) dreams.
Previous Profile: Amgen // Next Profile: Novo-Nordisk
Top 10 Biopharma Report homepage
Enter your account email.
A verification code was sent to your email, Enter the 6-digit code sent to your mail.
Didn't get the code? Check your spam folder or resend code
Set a new password for signing in and accessing your data.
Your Password has been Updated !