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The Shrinking Value Of Best-In-Class And First-In-Class Drugs

 
• By Roger Longman

Incumbency ain’t worth what it once was. Pharma companies are spending billions to create advantages that won’t have significant lasting power. Smart followers can do as well – for less.

It’s the Planck constant of the pharmaceutical industry: if you’re going to build a commercially successful drug, it needs to be either first- and/or best-in-class. Either one can create incumbent market share leaders – and incumbents in drugs, like incumbents in the legislature, are enormously difficult to dislodge. As a consequence, the first/best-in-class principles are used to justify enormous risk and enormous expenditures. They’ve even created a market for priority review vouchers.

And yet they're becoming less relevant -- or at least relevant for shorter periods of time.

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More from Archive

Final Chance To Have Your Say: Take Our Reader Survey This Week

 
• By Eleanor Malone

Editor’s note: This is your final call to participate in the survey to better understand our subscribers’ content and delivery needs. The deadline is 20 September.

Early Development Deals: Ipsen's Strategy For Biomarker-Driven Success

 
• By Eliza Slawther

Mary Jane Hinrichs, Ipsen’s head of early development, talks to In Vivo about getting ahead of the competition by securing deals for candidates before they enter Phase I trials.   

Shape Our Content: Take The Reader Survey

 
• By Eleanor Malone

Editor’s note: We are conducting a survey to better understand our subscribers’ content and delivery needs. If there are any changes you’d like to see in the coverage topics, content format or the method in which you receive and access In Vivo, or if you love it how it is, now is the time to have your voice heard.

In Partnership with Cerba Research

Prioritizing Safety in CAR-T Therapy: Patient Monitoring with Cerba Research’s Testing Portfolio

The cell and gene therapy (CGT) clinical trial landscape in general and CAR-T cell clinical trials in particular are a special focus for the FDA, EMA, and other regulatory agencies. The whole industry is thus aware of the recent FDA safety investigation and requirements for labeling CAR therapy products.

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Deals Shaping The Industry, May 2025

 
• By In Vivo Team

An interactive look at pharma, medtech and diagnostics deals made during May 2025. Data courtesy of Biomedtracker.

Podcast: Flagship’s Vision To Predict And Prevent Illness, With Raj Panjabi

 
• By David Wild

Flagship Pioneering senior partner Raj Panjabi discusses shifting health care from reactive treatment to AI-powered prediction and prevention of disease before symptoms emerge.

Rising Leaders 2025: Namrata Saroj On The Importance Of Authenticity In Ophthalmology

 
• By Sushmita Panda

Namrata Saroj, chief business officer of Ocular Therapeutix, is highly respected in the retina community for her contributions to drug development. She talked to In Vivo about her journey in ophthalmology, leadership philosophy and the importance of authenticity in a close-knit specialty.