What is the importance of difference in LCM strategy in drug development? - Learnings from Keytruda and Opdivo.

Immune checkpoint inhibitors have changed how cancer is treated. As of February 2022, six immune checkpoint inhibitors had been approved, with Keytruda and Opdivo accounting for the majority of global sales. Here, the impact of the differences in commercial success between Keytruda and Opdivo is reviewed by analyzing inter-organizational deals since their launch in 2014. Both showed a correlation between the cumulative number of indications and product sales trends, the latter crossing from 2017 to 2018. Differences in sales were due to different approaches to life cycle management by inter-organizational deals and drug development strategies, the key to commercial success.

Dynamic Collaborations for the Development of Immune Checkpoint Blockade Agents.

We studied the overview of drug discovery and development to understand the recent trends and potential success factors of interorganizational collaboration by reviewing 1204 transactions performed until 2019 for 107 anticancer drugs approved by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) from 1999 to 2018. Immune checkpoint blockade was found to be a significantly active area in interorganizational transactions, especially the number of alliances, compared with other mechanisms of action of small molecules and biologics for cancer treatment. Furthermore, the analysis of pembrolizumab and nivolumab showed that the number of approved indications for these two drugs has been rapidly expanding since their first approval in 2014. Examination of the acquisitions and alliances regarding pembrolizumab and nivolumab showed that many combination partners were developed by US-based biotechnology or start-up companies, the majority of which were biologics. These findings suggest that immune checkpoint blockade is a paradigm for cancer treatment, resulting in huge product sales and continuous indication expansion. Additionally, interorganizational collaboration, especially trial collaboration, is a strategic approach for the development of immune checkpoint blockade agents. The translation of these empirical practices to new drug candidates is expected for the research and development of innovative drugs in the future.