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Amdipharm: From Pharmacist to Pharma Firm

 
• By Melanie Senior

Amdipharm was set up in April 2003 to find and market niche products in areas of real clinical need, considered too small-or unsexy-for larger players. Wholly-owned by UK-based distributor and wholesaler Waymade Healthcare, which started out as a chain of pharmacies, Amdipharm's management reckons that the group's experience across the drug distribution chain, particularly at the buyer's end, and its proven deal making prowess, will help it achieve its aim of becoming a successful European pharma company.

The latest trend in the Big Pharma industry, given the dearth of new blockbusters coming through R&D, may be to go specialist, but it's still all relative. Pfizer Inc. 's co-promotion of Merck Serono SA 's interferon-beta drug Rebif for multiple sclerosis still involves a $550 million drug; Roche sells cancer products worth several hundred million in annual sales. These products may never be blockbusters, but they're still large enough to leave plenty of far smaller drugs off the bottom of pharma's priority list. Consolidation—both between Big Pharma and with biotechs—will likely continue to throw up stray compounds, or drugs which must be sold to satisfy increasingly stringent competition laws.

All of which endorses the strategy of firms like Amdipharm Mercury Ltd. , a wholly owned subsidiary of UK...

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