After a difficult year for investment, look for the biotech industry to engage in creative dealmaking in the market, leading to faster innovation in the lab, Protagonist Therapeutics CEO Dinesh Patel writes in Bio.News.
To recap: “A rocky market led to mass layoffs and closures while IPOs slowed to a trickle, and dealmaking was slower in comparison to historical norms,” says Patel.
He has three predictions for 2023:
- Expect ingenuity in dealmaking: We'll see a continuation of the creativity in 2022, when companies allowed hedge funds to gain access to unpublished clinical trial data, offered a percentage of future profits in exchange for cash, or formed new firms around key assets—as in Takeda’s $4 billion deal.
- Partnerships will pick up: “With more than $200 billion in cash on hand, large pharmas will take advantage of the challenging markets and lack of integration within the biotech industry,” says Patel. “Smart companies will forge symbiotic partnerships that will help them position for long-term growth,” and that will “help to move new medicines forward more efficiently.”
- Collaboration will drive faster innovation: The development of COVID-19 vaccines showed the possibility of public-private partnerships, and greater collaboration can also improve efficiency. Expect more cooperation, greater commercialization and profitability, and better patient outcomes.
The bottom line: “The biotechnology industry is one of the riskiest and the most challenging—but it is also one of the few that makes the difference between life and death,” says Patel. Expected consolidation and efficiency are “good for the industry and patients who are relying on us to deliver longer, better quality lives.”
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