The Drug Delivery Road Gets Tougher

While making money in drug delivery has always been tougher than its boosters have promised, this year's been ugly in new and disturbing ways. The key lessons of Pfizer's abandonment of inhaled insulin and Impax's patent assault on Endo's Opana are that partners are less reliable; the products need to be medically superior to existing ones, not simply more convenient; and generic companies are making inroads into the main bastion of drug-delivery success -- spec pharma.