Case Study: Supplementary UK Due Diligence

A UK pharmaceutical company wishing to diversify its branded generics portfolio was nearing completion of due diligence on a new opportunity. The therapy area was new to the company, and senior management were eager to get a final external opinion before finalising the deal, to ensure that there wasn’t anything about the market potential they had not considered. The deal was under time pressure so they needed a partner that could rapidly provide additional market insight.

We were engaged by the company to carry out rapid turn-around supplementary due diligence focused on the specific prescriber, budget holder and patient dynamics that could impact uptake of the brand. Because of the number of brands our team has worked on, we had in-house therapy area experience we could draw on enabling us to quickly determine the secondary research and primary research needs.

Within 3 weeks we had:

• Conducted a competitor analysis to understand the strengths and weaknesses of the market incumbents and the potential areas to challenge the dominance of the market leader
• Mapped the patient journey and identified the key health care professionals and allied professionals involved in patient care
• Conducted primary market research with key health care professionals and allied professionals to seek their feedback on the target product profile and understand the key drivers of choice for them and their colleagues

We were satisfied that there was significant potential for the medicine. We made a recommendation to the company to proceed with the deal but to get further clarity on two specific details of the product Summary of Product Characteristics, which because of the way that treatment changes are made in the therapy area, had significant implications for the ease of movement of patients from originator brand to the branded generic. We were able to determine the pricing that would be required to successfully complete, so we were able to advise our client so that they could seek to negotiate commercial terms from the licensor that would allow competitive UK pricing and sufficient margin.