C&EN Year in Pharma 2023

After several years of disruption and hard work, the pharmaceutical industry has dusted itself off and gotten back to business as usual. The number of drugs approved by the US Food and Drug Administration was certainly back up after 2022’s lean year, and drug companies with bulging coffers went on some high-profile spending sprees, snapping up biotechs to help their business development strategy as patent expirations loom.But what is business as usual? Our post-COVID-19 normality has changed our lives. In 2023, the pandemic-fueled pharma funding bubble also well and truly burst. Beyond the failure of Silicon Valley Bank and rising interest rates, investor sentiment seems to have cooled on biotechnology as a brand. Patients and industry executives are also watching to see how government-mandated price controls may begin affecting the pharma business.Both smaller biotechs and larger firms, such as Pfizer, Bayer, and GSK, ha...