Most pharma firms doing little R&D for poorer patients
Pharmaphorum Media Limited | November 21, 2018
A ranking of pharma companies developing new medicines for low- and middle-income countries has revealed that just five companies are responsible for almost two-thirds of projects. The heroes in the 2018 Access to Medicine Index for conducting high-priority R&D are GlaxoSmithKline, Johnson & Johnson, Sanofi, Merck KGaA and Novartis, with GSK topping the chart of top 20 pharma companies for the sixth year running. At the other end of the scale are Novo Nordisk, Boehringer Ingelheim, Eli Lilly, Bristol-Myers Squibb, and Roche. “The fact that a handful of companies are carrying the bulk of the priority R&D load shows how fragile the situation is. A retreat by even one of these players would have a significant impact,” said Jayashree Iyer, executive director of the Access to Medicine Foundation (AMF) which compiled the report. “If more companies joined this group, that would bring much-needed resilience.”