ABSTRACT

The life cycle management of pharmaceutical products through reformulation is an established practice in the industry and, historically, many commentators have recognized the opportunity that reformulation can represent for specialist companies and technology-focused innovators. The 1990s saw an increasing number of companies being created that based business models on the development of established therapeutic compounds as this offered pharmaceutical product development which was faster, cost less, and had a large part of the therapeutic risk removed. The estimated size of market represented by reformulation varies between commentators and relies upon the definition of drug delivery, but figures from Datamonitor estimate it to be currently worth in the region of $114 billion. If one also considers that on average between 2002 and 2005, 39% of all new product launches by the top 50 manufacturers were reformulations of existing drugs (MIDAS prescribing insights: IMS Health March 2006) and that IMS placed the global Pharmaceutical Market in 2006 at $643 billion, then the monetary value of reformulation is clearly significant.