These are cheaper and more sustainable options for governments in low-income countries for the basic, off-patent medicines that are needed.
While attending the Albany College of Pharmacy of Union University, he became fascinated by old apothecary items, like patent medicines and lozengemakers.
Most of the investments are in production facilities, RNCOS notes, adding that Brazil is likely to evolve into a production hub, becoming tough competition for China and India, and providing a platform for multinationals to develop and sell branded and generic versions of their off-patent medicines into other Latin American markets, if not further afield.
In the United States, generics are dirt cheap, while the market for patent protected medicines is one of the most lucrative markets for any product.
On Wednesday, ViiV Healthcare a joint venture of GlaxoSmithKline, Pfizer, and Shionogi announced it would grant a voluntary license to the Medicines Patent Pool to enable low-cost supply of a key pediatric HIV medicine in the 118 countries in which 98.7% of all HIV-positive children reside.
Generic drugs, cheap knockoffs that hit the market after medicines lose patent protection, saw sales jump 20%.
Making matters worse: By 2011, a quarter of current drug sales in the U.S. will be eaten away by less expensive generic pills as medicines lose patent protection.
Compared to the past few years, there will simply not be as many big-selling brand-name medicines losing patent protection, which means generic drugmakers cannot simply jumpstart growth by acquiring another generic drugmaker.
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In the past few weeks, a rash of medicines have lost patent protection through court decisions.
Labs routinely turn naturally found molecules into innovative medicines and get patent protection.
Meanwhile, an entire pharmacopoeia of medicines have gone off patent and fallen out of use.
But investors have spent years worrying about what happens when these massively successful HIV medicines begin to lose patent protection.
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Generics are chemically identical copies of branded medicines that have lost patent protection, creating a level of competition that can drive prices down.
Patent expiration of cholesterol-lowering medicines Zocor and Pravachol will put particular pressure on Pfizer 's Lipitor as health plans push their enrollees to use the copycat drugs instead.
Patent expiration of cholesterol-lowering medicines Zocor and Pravachol will put particular pressure on Pfizer 's (nyse: PFE - news - people ) Lipitor as health plans push their enrollees to use the copycat drugs instead.
Medicines that will soon go off patent or didn't finish clinical trials could also be options for development.
Drugstores and pharmacy benefits managers have reaped gains from this trend since blockbuster medicines like the cholesterol fighter Lipitor lost patent protection at the end of 2011.
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The biggest controversy is whether Pfizer will spin off its established products unit, which sells generic drugs and branded medicines like Norvasc and Zoloft that have lost patent protection.
But other medicines do, particularly when there is a new entrant being sold by a drug company that is better or, as has happened in heart failure, when evidence about medicines has emerged after they have gone off patent.
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Professor Venter said it is the only way drug companies are going to use genetic information to make medicines - to invest in the research they need the patent protection to ensure they recoup their money.
Right now there is a lot more dread about drugs that will lose patent protection than there is excitement about the company's experimental medicines, even though Pfizer is now testing 47 midstage compounds, more than at any other time in its history.
There are no more big drugs going off-patent through the end of the decade, he wrote, and new medicines more than support the company's valuation.
Sanofi-Aventis posted earnings that beat analyst forecasts by 8%, bragged about a growing pipeline of new medicines, and predicted it could navigate a wave of upcoming patent expirations.
Pharmaceutical companies must worry less about squeezing additional profits from old medicines by copying the last successful drug and insisting on additional patent protections and focus more on new and innovative medicine.
Plavix and Singulair both go off patent over the next couple years, ending the age of mass-market medicines completely.
"This provision severely devalues all underlying patent rights and could seriously undermine the incentive to develop novel new forms of medicines and other technologies, " says BIO chief Jim Greenwood.
And while Aventis' cupboard is relatively bare when it comes to new drugs--and Allegra's patent could expire as early as 2005--Sanofi is developing many promising medicines, including a stop-smoking drug and a treatment for heart rhythm irregularities.
It also drives home the trouble that large pharmaceutical companies are having inventing new medicines, even as their old moneymakers approach a time when they will no longer have patent protection.
First, some medicines could have most of their sales in the U.S. because they are off-patent elsewhere.
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