Um, guess not since BMS's Opdivo is going to kick your ass. So glad. Such a scummy company deserves bad outcomes.
You see, Merck laid off or pushed out its best & brightest researchers, who are now at other companies and beating you at your own game. Like your inferior oncology product! Karma!
Ohhhhhh. So you're a lab guy. Get it now. Let me help you. The days of pouring billions per year into potential chemical developments is over. You missed the boat. It's all small molecule and biologics now. The equipment necessary to develop molecules is readily available to the masses, not just the largest of pharma companies, as was previously needed to develop chemicals compounds of 30 years ago. Most major pharma companies, including Merck, were slow on the uptake of this shift, but it has been shown, and furthermore proven, that there is more value in BUYING promising molecules from smaller start-ups and universities than by actually trying to produce homegrown results from scratch. BUYING promising molecules makes every university researcher or scientist at a start-up a researcher ON YOUR BEHALF, should you acquire the smaller company, minus any of the overhead, meaning that you can cherry pick the most promising drug. The research "net" is cast wider over millions of experiments bring proven out worldwide, versus the small net previously cast over the 5000 lab personnel working in the basement, for who you must pay continual overhead on, and who MIGHT find something useful for the bottom line in the next ten years. This new method simply hedges risk. Yes, you must pay to buy the new small company/molecule. But in the end it's STILL cheaper, because you use the cost of purchase as a tax deduction to lower yearly earnings, and streamline the assimilated company's operations into your current business (I.e. Layoff redundant functions like finance, Hr, etc.). Companies like J&J & BMS & Pfizer poured billion after billion into research year over year, with MINIMAL results, when they'd have been better off using that money to acquire entire companies with promising pipelines. Novartis adopted this model in 2006, straight from the CEOs mouth. Home grown research at big just doesn't pay off anymore, unless it is to develop further indications on those drugs already acquired, or prove out phase 3 drugs in the community. Nobody wanted to let you go. Look at this as a new beginning, and an opportunity for you to be one of the lucky ones to hopefully find a job at a startup that gets bought out in this new model of pharma expansion.
So you're a BMS guy. Congrats on the squamous indication. Be sure to let us know how the physician letter-writing campaign to insurers works out in the 80% of lung cases you're NOT indicated to treat. Doctors will be lined up around the corner to take a bite out of that risky apple, I'm sure, just as insurers will line up to pay $150k for off label use. You can have that squamous niche...for now. We want the WHOLE PIE. Watch the backswing on the pendulum, it'll be a doozy!
Reasonable post. However, Pembro will NEVER own more lung marketshare the Nivo. EVER. You clearly do not understand this space or the data. I hope "the doozy" sells itself. Or we will be looking for a new job.
