The overall R&D productivity of the 30 largest public biopharma companies has increased despite a challenging global environment for investment and growth. Will hype cycles impact this picture in coming years?

The R&D productivity of the top 30 largest biopharma companies decreased slightly from 2021 to 2022 and the sector saw the lowest number of FDA approvals in the past 10 years. 

A turbulent 2021: we are now in our eighth year of reviewing R&D productivity and corporate growth of the top 30 biopharma companies. While 2021 was dominated by the COVID-19 pandemic, biopharma as a whole had a good but not great year.

The decrease in overall R&D productivity continues – a trend that started in 2018. It would be too easy to attribute this fall in R&D productivity to COVID-19 alone.

An analysis of the R&D productivity of the world’s 30 largest public pharmaceutical companies reveals an overall drop in R&D productivity, but this should not hide the fact that some companies are still performing extremely well.