Mike Hollan

The businessman’s pharmaceutical company, Cost Plus Drugs, is partnering with Price.com to build a platform where consumers can compare drug prices. According to a press release from Price.com,

 the goal of the platform is to make prescription drugs more affordable to the people who need them. By being able to compare drug prices, users will be able to find the most affordable sources.

In a press release, Mark Cuban Cost Plus Drug Company CEO Alex Oshmyansky said, “We are thrilled to collaborate with Price.com in our mission to make prescription drugs more affordable for consumers. At Cost Plus Drugs, our commitment to transparent drug pricing has always been unwavering, and with Price.com, we are dedicated to providing affordable and accessible healthcare solutions for all."

In the same press release, Price.com CEO and founder RJ Jain also said, “Teaming up with Mark Cuban Cost Plus Drug Company is a pivotal step towards achieving our shared goal of improving healthcare affordability and accessibility. Thanks to this collaboration, Price.com users can make informed choices that best suit their health and financial needs."

This is just the latest move Cuban’s company has made towards increasing its prominence in the pharmaceutical landscape.

In mid-March, Cost Plus Drug Company announced that it had teamed up with Provell Pharmaceuticals to provide patients with direct access to Euthyrox, a leading hypothyroid drug.

 The goal of this partnership is— similarly to the company’s partnership with Price.com—to provide the drug at affordable prices.

According to a press release from Provell Pharmaceuticals, Euthyrox is one of the most prescribed drugs worldwide.

In the press release, Provell Pharmaceuticals CEO Steve Hodge said, “Our mission is to remove the cost barrier for millions of Americans, regardless of insurance coverage, who need quality medications but who often cannot afford them due to markups imposed by a variety of players in the US healthcare landscape. By working directly with online platforms such as Cost Plus Drugs, which shares our vision to make drugs affordable and accessible to all, we are disrupting the traditional model and conferring significant savings to patients."

In the same press release, Oshmyansky added, “Drug prices continue to rise exponentially, and it's an unsustainable trend that is extracting a huge toll on the health and well-being of many Americans. We've developed an alternative model–and are partnering with like-minded companies such as Provell Pharmaceuticals—to offer prescription drugs directly to consumers at a fraction of the cost by showing consumers exactly what the drugs cost, exactly what our margin is, and exactly what consumers will pay. It's fair, transparent, and is dramatically less expensive for patients."

Price.com Announces Collaboration with Mark Cuban Cost Plus Drug Company to Make Prescription Drugs More Affordable. 

https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/pricecom-announces-collaboration-with-mark-cuban-cost-plus-drug-company-to-make-prescription-drugs-more-affordable-302105807.html

Provell Pharmaceuticals and Mark Cuban Cost Plus Drug Company Bring Leading Hypothyroid Drug, Euthyrox®, to U.S. Patients at Low-Cost Prices through Direct-to-Consumer Model. 

. March 12, 2024. Accessed April 2, 2024. 

https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/provell-pharmaceuticals-and-mark-cuban-cost-plus-drug-company-bring-leading-hypothyroid-drug-euthyrox-to-us-patients-at-low-cost-prices-through-direct-to-consumer-model-302085598.html

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The two company’s will provide consumers with a platform where they can compare drug prices.

Mark Cuban’s Cost Plus Drugs Partners with Price.com

Novo Nordisk’s parent company recently announced that it has agreed to purchase Catalent. As part of the acquisition, Novo Nordisk will purchase three of Catalent’s manufacturing sites. This is part of a move by the company to increase its ability to meet the demand for Wegovy, a highly popular weight loss drug.

Bruce Phelan, senior partner at Blue Fin, spoke with Pharmaceutical Executive about the larger impact that this purchase will have on the industry. The pharma industry has seen a return of mergers and acquisitions in the past year, and Phelan discusses how this trend may continue.

Pharmaceutical Executive: Will other pharmaceutical companies need to start buying CDMO/CMOs to ensure they have the capacity they need?


The pharmaceutical manufacturing market has been undergoing significant growth since 2015 and is divided between CDMOs (contract development and manufacturing organizations) and CMOs (contract manufacturing organizations). There has been a significant shift of pharmaceutical manufacturers core competencies, especially in manufacturing expertise and increased sophistication of complex products, and an increased reliance on CDMOs and CMOs for capacity and expertise, inclusive of API manufacturing as well as Finished Goods manufacturing.

As such, small and large pharmaceutical companies have increased their outsourcing to their drug manufacturing CDMO or CMOs partners because they need access to manufacturing capacity or technological manufacturing capabilities beyond what they have within their in-house manufacturing capabilities and capacities and to mitigate potential risk of under supply or low yield.

The global need for manufacturing capacity and technical expertise has significantly accelerated over the past 7-8 years and furthermore during the pandemic. The advent of mRNA, increased vaccine production, precision medicine, CGTs and radio-pharmaceuticals manufacturing has absorbed a lot of the sophisticated CDMO and CMO available manufacturing capacity, making more complex manufacturing more valuable and less available. These product-level demands require CDMO and CMO manufacturing line dedication, personnel expertise, technology transfer, and specific manufacturing understanding to operate CDMOs and CMOs.

Purchasing and vertically integrating a CDMO or CMO into pharmaceutical manufacturers supply chain is worth considering dependent upon the need for increased/excess supply of the Finished Goods (product), specific manufacturing requirements, the need for excess or increased capacity based on commercial product forecasting, and to manage downside risks of the lack of outsourced manufacturing capacity or the trained personnel to operate sophisticated manufacturing processes.

For example, manufacturing delays and stock outs for key medicines have highlighted downsides of outsourcing to manufacturers with short-term, arm’s length partnership models. Buying a CDMO and/or CMO puts the control of manufacturing back into the hands of pharmaceutical manufacturers to ensure their own product supply.

The current independent CDMO/CMO markets continue to operate through expanded demand, limited capacity, and under a high degree of fluctuating uncertainty.

CDMO and CMO Market(s) lacks clarity on future capacity needed for pandemic-related projects—potential that vaccine will be needed on an annual basis, but is subsiding.

Demand for “traditional biopharma” capacity is volatile in the short-to-mid-term – depending on product demands for products and indication expansions for PD-1 / PD-L1 inhibitors, CGT, and vaccines (among others).

Shortage of capacity to satisfy current and future manufacturing needs of CGTs (sophisticated manufacturing techniques)–but bulk of pipeline is in pre-clinical phase and degree of progression to later stage trials is uncertain.

PE: Will pharmaceutical companies need to invest in building out their own facilities?


Creating external CDMO and CMO supply chains and manufacturing product supply may be a manufacturing scaling option and potential value driver for many established global pharmaceutical companies. However, scaling into additional CDMO and CMO manufacturing platforms to accomplish capacity and efficiency requires aligned business processes, software supporting manufacturing, digital systems, and interfaces with the parent pharmaceutical company, and detailed manufacturing analytics supporting capacity and capability.

In addition to the costs of building or acquiring the manufacturing physical plant, footprint, licensures, and construction; pharmaceutical companies are confronted with significant operational burden, digital integration, and managing manufacturing personnel outside of their current bandwidth and expertise.

Reasons to invest capital into building manufacturing facilities:

Multiple promising technologies entering market that require unique manufacturing capabilities.

mRNA therapy development is expected to expand rapidly post COVID and well into the future.

Precision Medicine, Personalized Medicine, and Cell and gene therapy is a major focus of development, but commercial timelines, demand, and impact is uncertain.

Increased pressure to manufacture within same country/region due to nationalist/regionalist interests.

PE: If you are a pharmaceutical company, will you want to do business with a CMO/CDMO that is beholden to a competitor?


Large CDMOs and CMOs support multiple small and large pharmaceutical companies’ products. For example, Lonza supports multiple and potentially competing products they manufacture for several pharmaceutical companies. Although companies and products compete for the same limited capacity, CDMOs and CMOs are not constrained by competitor products. Instead, the challenge is meeting the capacity requirements of current and future capacity requirements by multiple pharmaceutical companies vying for the same limited manufacturing sites and techniques. Not only are site and capacity limited placing high concentration on certain CDMOs and CMOs, so too are the technically trained personnel who operate pharmaceutical manufacturing sites. Ultimately, pharmaceutical manufacturers compete for manufacturing line space and capacity as well as the trained human capital it takes to manufacturer pharmaceutical API and Finished goods and the strategic capabilities to manage future capacity and growth trajectory.

PE: What does this mean for the weight loss/diabetes group of drugs from other companies like Lilly?


The unprecedented and significant increase in product demand for GLP-1 products for the treatment of diabetes and weight loss has surpassed the original contracts, production forecasts, and capacity for CDMOs and CMOs and particularly those that specialize in API manufacturing as well as biosimilar manufacturing.

The risk of market failure (where supply ≠ demand) in the short-to mid-term is real. Continued high demand for CMO capacity due to COVID-19, vaccines, and specialty products coupled with substantial demand volatility in other key areas, has increased the probability that CMOs may under commit to the necessary capacity expansions needed to sufficiently meet demand for traditional biopharma manufacturing, inclusive of diabetes, weight-loss, and GLP-1s.

CDMO/CMO shift to a sellers’ market suggests they may seek longer term, comprehensive partnerships with pharmaceutical manufacturer partners. The line between CDMO and CMO is getting smaller as development timelines are shortening and pharmaceutical product launches shift to smaller volume and highly specialized products that consume capacity and manufacturing expertise.

To leverage the benefits of a CDMO/CMO end-to-end manufacturing models, which may be required to support products such as a GLP-1 model, a manufacturer must involve commercial manufacturing network planning early on in the clinical development process. Without this early commercial integration, selection of a CDMO is only based on “D” capabilities, not “M” capabilities to try to support the excess demand.

Bruce Phelan of Blue Fin discusses Novo Nordisk's purchase of Catalent manufacturing sites to increase its ability to meet the demand for the popular weight loss drug Wegovy.

Implications of Novo Nordisk Acquisition of Catalent Reverberate Through Industry

Artificial intelligence (AI) is hitting pharma’s budgets, but not in the way you think.

A new survey of pharma executives looked into the ways which pharma companies are incorporating AI into their business plans.

According to the results, a significant number of pharma leaders are already so confident in the results that technology like generative AI can achieve that they’re adjusting their budgets.

Essentially, they expect AI to save them money in certain areas and are adjusting their budgets in accordance.

The survey was conducted by Bain and Company, a global consultancy firm. In a press release, the company states that about 40% of the survey’s participants stated that they were already adjusting their budgets based on expected savings from AI. In an answer to a different question, 60% of respondents said that they were setting targets based on AI’s ability to either cut costs or boost productivity.

In a press release, Eric Berger, a partner in Bain & Company’s Healthcare & Life Sciences practice, said, “Over the next six to twelve months, leading companies will move from cultivating isolated pilots to scaling for results. As leadership teams move beyond experimentation into pilots and launches, they are thinking carefully about when and how to communicate their AI journeys to investors. Those that can signal a structured, scalable enterprise-wide program, rather than a smattering of standalone initiatives, will reap the rewards in the next phase of AI."

The results suggest that the pharma industry is moving past an exploratory phase with generative AI and are expecting to fully embrace its use in the coming year.

While AI and machine learning programs and algorithms have been around for quite some time, the technology became a hot button topic in 2023. The release of multiple AI programs, such as ChatGPT, garnered high levels of public interest based on their abilities to seemingly create new content based on unique, user-created prompts.

The technology has its critics, especially generative AI. While the technology is able to generate text, audio, visual, or other elements, it’s still just a program and isn’t actually intelligent. It doesn’t truly understand what it’s creating or, more importantly, where it’s pulling the information from. Many critics point to generative AI’s tendency to hallucinate, or more accurately, create information out of thin air. For example, users of generative AI who asked it to generate a cited essay have noticed that some, if not all, of the citations created by the program are either inaccurate or point to sources that don’t exist.

That’s not to say that the technology doesn’t have its uses, however. Many pharma companies have found uses for it connected to data management and sourcing. According to Bain & Company’s survey, 46% of respondents said they were using the technology to find potential disease targets.

Most significantly, 75% of respondents stated the use of generative AI is a top priority to the C-suite and members of the board.

40% of pharma executives are baking expected savings from Generative AI into 2024 budgets. 

https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/40-of-pharma-executives-are-baking-expected-savings-from-generative-ai-into-2024-budgets-302059600.html

The analysis notes that 60% of respondents were setting targets based on AI’s ability to either cut costs or boost productivity.

Survey: Pharma Execs Are Fully Embracing the Use of AI 

Image Credit: Adobe Stock Images/Jezper.com

The generic drug market is expected to show significant growth in the coming years.

At least, that’s according to a new study conducted by Technavio, a leading global technology research and advisory company.

 In a press release, the research company detailed the estimated growth, stating that it believes the market will grow by $176.25 billion by 2027. It also states that North America will contribute about 37% of this growth.

In the press release, a senior analyst at Technavio said, “The rising drug patent expirations are notably driving the generic drug market growth. Patent expirations enable companies like Abbott to produce generic drugs with the same APIs as brand-name drugs, making them more affordable. After patent expiration, companies can create branded generics, as any manufacturer can apply to the FDA for a chemically identical generic version.”

According to the study, the US and Canada will both play a significant role in the market’s expansion. This is due to a variety of reasons, including the population’s exposure to conditions that can cause chronic diseases. Another key factor is the need for low-cost alternatives to brand name drugs, which are typically more expensive.

It’s unclear at this point how governmental regulations in the region might impact these estimates. For example, the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) has certain drug pricing provisions that could impact drug patents. This regulation is still being negotiated however, and it’s unclear what state it will be in when various provisions go into effect. The upcoming US election could also impact the status of the IRA.

However, as drug patents are set to expire in the coming years, generics are bound to make it to market. With drug prices being an important issue, especially for citizens of and companies operating in the United States, less expensive biosimilars are attractive alternatives. According to the report, the small-molecule generics market is going to be significant in the coming years.

Generic Drugs Market to grow by USD 176.25 billion from 2022 to 2027, North America is estimated to contribute 37% to the growth – Technavio. 

. February 7, 2024. Accessed February 8, 2024. 

https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/generic-drugs-market-to-grow-by-usd-176-25-billion-from-2022-to-2027--north-america-is-estimated-to-contribute-37-to-the-growth---technavio-302056699.html

Technavio analysis notes that an increase drug patent expirations could be a contributing factor. 