Merck is set to lead pharmaceutical licensing deals in 2018, says report

The pharmaceutical industry is highly volatile, with promising lead candidates making or breaking a company’s year.

Companies’ financial success is often down to the strategic deals they are able to make with other pharmaceutical companies and research organizations to enable them to develop the next leading drug in the market, observes GlobalData, a leading data and analytics company. 
The $8.5 billion agreement between AstraZeneca (LSE: AZN) and Merck & Co (NYSE: MRK) to co-develop AstraZeneca’s Lynparza (olaparib) for multiple cancer types puts the two companies at the top for strategic alliance spending for 2017. AstraZeneca just clinched the top spot from Merck with its development deals with Pieris Pharmaceuticals (Nasdaq: PIRS) and MedImmune.

Lisa Marris, healthcare analyst at GlobalData, comments: “Despite this, Merck has had an arguably more successful year. It more than quadrupled its alliance deal values since 2016, and if its subsidiaries are added to the equation, its 2017 deal values rise to $9.5 billion, an increase of 248% from 2016, whereas AstraZeneca and its subsidiaries stayed almost stagnant at $11 billion.