Tipping points - the future of the pharmaceutical industry in the UK

Last week’s announcement by global drugs behemoth Pfizer (NYSE: PFE) that, as part of a series of cost-cutting moves, it would close its research site at Sandwich in the UK (The Pharma Letter February 2) generated thousands of column inches of press coverage, most of it critical of the UK government’s industry and research policies, despite the drugmaker’s protestations that this had nothing to do with its decision. And, on Friday, saw a damning report from the UK's largest organization for funding research on economic and social issues, the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC).

The ESRC said that closure of Pfizer’s Sandwich Lab is part of a long-term decline in drug development, a trend that has been affecting all major UK pharmaceutical multinationals. Big pharmaceutical companies have been downsizing, outsourcing and merging in an attempts to find an innovation strategy that will keep their pipelines filled with new, potentially profitable products, it noted.

Need for radical reform of regulatory system