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Goldman Sachs Asks: 'Is Curing Patients a Sustainable Business Model?' (cnbc.com)

Posted by msmash on from the wow dept.

Goldman Sachs analysts attempted to address a touchy subject for biotech companies, especially those involved in the pioneering "gene therapy" treatment: cures could be bad for business in the long run. "Is curing patients a sustainable business model?" analysts ask in an April 10 report entitled "The Genome Revolution." From a report: "The potential to deliver 'one shot cures' is one of the most attractive aspects of gene therapy, genetically-engineered cell therapy and gene editing. However, such treatments offer a very different outlook with regard to recurring revenue versus chronic therapies," analyst Salveen Richter wrote in the note to clients Tuesday. "While this proposition carries tremendous value for patients and society, it could represent a challenge for genome medicine developers looking for sustained cash flow."

Richter cited Gilead Sciences' treatments for hepatitis C, which achieved cure rates of more than 90 percent. The company's U.S. sales for these hepatitis C treatments peaked at $12.5 billion in 2015, but have been falling ever since. Goldman estimates the U.S. sales for these treatments will be less than $4 billion this year, according to a table in the report. "GILD is a case in point, where the success of its hepatitis C franchise has gradually exhausted the available pool of treatable patients," the analyst wrote.

4 of 443 comments (clear)

  1. Well.. by Z80a · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Time to blacklist anyone working at goldman sachs from getting any sort of cure.

    1. Re:Well.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Why cure them entirely though, when you can mostly-cure them and treat the remaining effects with a lifetime supply of patented drugs?

      There is a market failure to research complete and cost effective cures for diseases.

      Medical research should be entirely funded by the public, and all patents and treatments that result made available to the public for free.

      Obviously, this leads to a better system. Stop trying to defend the status quo.

  2. It is ... by Going_Digital · · Score: 5, Insightful

    If your competitors can't. If you develop a treatment and your competitor has a cure then your business is flushed down the toilet while your competitor gets rich. So unless the biotech companies collude with each other there is always the risk that a competitor will produce a cure killing your business, so you had better get there first and kill their business instead.

  3. That's a question by Artem+S.+Tashkinov · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Yes, bloody idiots.

    The longer the person lives the longer he might be a client of various medical/pharmaceutical companies because we're not getting younger and healthier with each passing day.