Cooperative buying to help launch new medicines in small markets

Large manufacturers minimum order quantities put specialist medicines out of reach of buyers in smaller markets. By grouping pharmaceutical orders from different buyers into a single collective bulk order, Pipelinepharma will help buyers to reach the minimum order quota. The initiative further builds upon Pipelinepharma’s mission to provide better access to medicines for patients all around the world.

According to the CEO of Pipelinepharma Mindaugas Zagorskis, smaller pharmaceutical markets are at a constant disadvantage due to their size. In Central and Eastern Europe, such markets include Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia or the Baltic states. Many countries in Central America, Africa or the Middle East suffer from a similar fate.

Market size limitations become evident when a pharmaceutical company is looking to introduce a specialist medicine in a niche therapy area (for instance, oncology), where high purchase volumes cannot be reached.

“As an example, on Pipelinepharma we received a purchase request for Nilotinib capsules for the Bulgarian market. Globally there are only a few CTD dossiers and manufacturers of this medicine who meet European GMP requirements. The minimum order quantities for the drug would not make commercial sense for the buyer, simply making this promising medicine out of reach of this market. There have been multiple cases when the simple issue of market size invalidates the business case for introduction of new generic or biosimilar medicines”, - noted Mindaugas Zagorskis.

To address this issue, Pipelinepharma has introduced a cooperative buying option on its marketplace. When an order from a single buyer cannot meet the minimum order threshold, Pipelinepharma’s executives will actively look for additional buyers in the same region to be included in the same purchase. The cooperation of buyers is relevant for many therapy areas, such as oncology, diabetes, cardiology, central nervous system, to name a few, where order volumes in small markets tend to be low, yet the introduction of new medicines would contribute to improved patient outcomes.

“We have more than 10.000 qualified pharmaceutical companies as buyers on the Pipelinepharma marketplace. With a vast number of purchase requests and dedicated executives for target regions, we understand the market pulse very well. This allows us to quickly identify new commercial opportunities and contact relevant companies to help these deals happen”, - notes Mindaugas Zagorskis.

Pipelinepharma is the largest online B2B pharmaceutical marketplace for finished dosage formulations. The platform provides access to more than 85.000 generic and biosimilar pharmaceutical products. It helps to match qualified buyers with the right manufacturers, significantly reducing business development costs and time-to-market for pharmaceutical products.

“Pipelinepharma has already become a popular option in sourcing differentiated, hard-to-get generic and biosimilar pharmaceuticals. By helping to introduce new pharmaceutical products in smaller markets, we are further building upon our mission to improve cost-efficient access to medicines for patients around the world”, - added Mindaugas Zagorskis.