North America leads in number of global pharma partnerships

According to new research, North America the highest amount of strategic pharma partnerships in the global pharmaceutical industry from 2014 to the first half of 2019.

Within this time, over 1,300 separate strategic partnerships and 1,000 licensing agreements were made within pharma worldwide, reveals GlobalData.

The industries investigated include gene therapy, immuno-oncology, microbiome and orphan drug therapeutics.

The report details that North America had double the amount of partnerships than Europe and five times as many of the Asia-Pacific region within this time. This is suggested to be driven by US market prices.

A further finding is that since 2018, the number of licenses in the Asia-Pacific region has begun to overtake those in Europe.

Dr Jesus Cuaron, PPM, Associate Director of Cardiovascular and Metabolic Disease (CVMD), as well as Gender Health Pharma at GlobalData, explains: “There is a high volume of established partnerships, especially between early-stage companies and established players. With this approach of undertaking multiple partnerships, established players can hedge their bets as they wait for more clinical data to become available.”

Cuaron continues: “From a commercial perspective, companies, especially those that are developing gene therapies, depend upon having reliable strategies or platforms. For developing next-generation cell-based therapeutics, required platforms would include technologies such as zinc finger nuclease and CRIPSR. It is important for companies to be aware of the challenges associated with licensing agreements. For example, smaller biotech companies in particular will face challenges in the form of pressure to meet major clinical milestones.”