Biopharma Out-licensing: 2012’s “In” Thing?

Talk to any big pharma business development executive about dealmaking trends for more than 15 minutes and the word out-licensing is bound to crop up. But are major drugmakers moving beyond the rhetoric and actually giving up rights to individual assets that heretofore would have been deemed too valuable to merit out-licensing? An analysis by IN VIVO suggests yes – but with qualifications.

Talk to any Big Pharma business development executive about dealmaking trends for more than 15 minutes and the word out-licensing is bound to crop up. It’s not hard to understand why: drugmakers face significant cost-constraints thanks to patent expirations and shrinking R&D budgets, and mid-stage pipelines are overly full in the wake of recent mega-mergers. As a result, says Doug Giordano, a VP of business development at Pfizer Inc., executives realize “it is now more attractive to outlicense assets than allow [them] to sit on the shelves.”

And certainly many different groups are bound to be interested in Big Pharma’s deprioritized mid-stage assets. VCs in particular are...

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