About a year ago in this space, we looked at deal volume and average dollar value of in-licensings by specialty pharma—companies building businesses around in-licensing poorly penetrated or tail-end drugs and growing their share through targeted sales efforts. We postulated that the young specialty pharma business model might be already suffering from diminishing returns: average deal prices were being driven up by competition among specialty pharmas, while deal volume seemed about to decline. (See "In-Licensing in Specialty Pharma," IN VIVO, October 2003 Also see "In-Licensing in Specialty Pharma" - In Vivo, 1 October, 2003..)
A year later, the trend has continued. (See Exhibit 1.) In-licensing volume by the 29 companies we tracked has indeed...
