As Big Pharma patents age, smaller biotechs hold the most clinical-stage assets
By Steve Scherer ( August 19, 2026, 13:42 GMT | Comment) -- Big Pharma is under growing pressure to restock its drug pipelines as an unusually large wave of patent expirations threatens hundreds of billions of dollars in revenue. That urgency is intensifying competition for acquisitions and partnerships with smaller biotechs, which now control most clinical-stage assets and much of the industry’s unpartnered innovation.Big Pharma is facing an outsized wave of patent expirations at a time when most drugs in clinical development are held by emerging biopharma companies, adding urgency to the longstanding strategy of buying smaller biotechs to replenish billions of dollars in sales threatened by expiring exclusivity....
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