EY study Corona is changing the pharmaceutical industry

Status: June 21, 2021 3:53 p.m.

The corona pandemic did not give the pharmaceutical industry a boost in 2020, it actually slowed it down. According to an EY study, only cancer medicine and ophthalmology are booming.

by Notker Blechner, tagesschau.de

Is “Big Pharma” but not a beneficiary of the corona pandemic? The management consultants from EY (formerly Ernst & Young) are convinced: “The corona crisis was not a growth driver in the past year, on the contrary, it led to higher spending on research and development”, says Klaus Ort, head of EY’s Life Sciences & Healthcare market segment in German-speaking countries. “The pharmaceutical industry wasn’t a big winner from the pandemic.” In fact, sales of the world’s 21 largest pharmaceutical companies rose by just 4.4 percent in 2020. In the year before the pandemic, the increase was almost 13 percent. However, this was also due to a billion-dollar takeover in the industry.

Corona slowed growth

According to Ort, Corona led to delays in various treatments. Among other things, the fact that fewer operations were carried out in hospitals had a negative effect. This slowed down sales of the corresponding drugs and therapies. In the case of funds for heart and circulatory diseases, for example, revenues stagnated after having increased significantly in 2019. Sales of therapeutics for respiratory diseases even fell. Place refers to the wearing of face and nose masks as the reason, which also prevented infectious diseases such as flu.

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Corona surge will not come until 2021

With sales of 26.4 billion euros, vaccines only made up a good five percent of total sales last year “Big Pharma” out. That should change in 2021. The US pharmaceutical giant Pfizer has already announced that the corona vaccine Comirnaty will flush a good 15 billion dollars into the coffers. That’s a good quarter of Pfizer’s total sales. “At Pfizer, Corona will only have an impact on sales in 2021″says EY expert Ort.

Pfizer partner BioNTech also expects an enormous growth spurt in new, unimagined dimensions this year. The Mainz corona vaccine pioneer expects sales of 9.8 billion euros for 2021 and should thus become the third largest German pharmaceutical manufacturer – behind Bayer and Boehringer.

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766 Covid vaccines and therapeutics pending

EY was unable to quantify how high the market volume for combating corona is. However, the management consultants see huge potential. They refer to 260 vaccine candidates who are currently in studies. So far, only four vaccines have been approved. “The four big players dominate the market and will continue to do so”, predicts Alexander Nuyken, co-author of the study and head of life sciences transaction consulting at EY. Because of the increasing number of mutations, the hurdle for approval will become higher and higher in future.

EY has found out that 506 therapeutics are in the pipeline for drugs against Covid-19. However, no means of this have yet managed to obtain approval. “Despite all the vaccination euphoria, one should not lose sight of this fact”, warns EY expert Nuyken. People are still dying of Covid-19 due to a lack of medication. After all, the number of drug candidates has doubled since the end of 2020. And: 162 therapeutics are in the clinical phase III study. The most promising means is considered the cortisone drug dexamethasone . According to a large-scale study by Oxford University, it lowers the death rate of seriously ill Covid patients by at least 25 percent. In the initial phase of the corona disease, Remdesivir, which was the first Covid drug approved in Europe, also works – albeit only under certain conditions.

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Price drop for corona tests

The EY experts see the market for corona tests as completely oversaturated. There are currently 1,021 diagnostic tests on the market, more than half of which are so-called immunassays (including rapid antigen tests). “We see a drop in prices here”says EY expert Nuyken. Individual drugstore and supermarket chains are now offering self-tests for 80 cents.

Thanks to Corona, the vaccine business has experienced a renaissance, emphasize the EY experts. The biotech sector in particular benefits. Due to new trends such as digitization as well as gene and cell therapies, it is on the threshold of further growth. According to EY, the German biotechs received more capital in 2020 than ever before.

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Cancer medicine is the major growth driver

The main market for “Big Pharma” but oncology remains. In the fight against cancer, the industry has a turnover of over 200 billion euros, which is more than a third of the entire pharmaceutical business. In 2020, the world’s 21 largest pharmaceutical companies increased their sales in oncology by 14.6 percent. Experts are also predicting growth rates of ten percent for the coming years. Only ophthalmology promises similarly strong growth. Because of the trend towards home office in the pandemic, myopia increased in many people, especially children.

Biotech companies could provide a new boost in the cancer market. Amgen recently made a breakthrough in cancer therapy with Lumakras. For the first time, an active ingredient was approved that is directed against mutations in the KRAS gene. The KRAS mutations are one of the most common causes of pancreatic, colon and lung cancers. The mRNA technology that BioNTech and Moderna are successfully using in the fight against Corona also promises huge potential for cancer research.

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Biotech could also bring progress in the fight against Alzheimer’s. In early June, Biogen received “green light” for the active ingredient aducanumab . It is the first Alzheimer’s drug to receive FDA approval since 2003.

According to the study by EY, the Swiss Roche Group has maintained its top position in the ranking of the world’s largest pharmaceutical companies with 43.4 billion euros. AbbVie climbed to second place – just ahead of Johnson & Johnson and Merck & Co. Pfizer slipped to sixth place in the rankings. Due to the corona surge, the US pharmaceutical giant should regain the top spot in 2021