The Most Productive Pharma Companies of the Past 10 Years

In the United States, Janssen has been recognized as the most productive pharmaceutical company of the last 10 years. Janssen, which is more known in the US under the name of its parent company Johnson & Johnson, appeared to have had most new medicines newly approved in the last decade. According to data from the InnoThink Center for Research in Biomedical Innovation, 278 new medicines have been approved by the Food and Drug Administration, the US regulatory body for approving new medicines. With 13 new medicines Janssen (Johnson & Johnson) leads the list (see below).

According to Forbes, which published the ranking “This data gives insight into how productive different drug companies have been over this time period — one during which, generally speaking, research and development in the pharmaceutical industry has been below the level it needed to be. Obviously, a count of the number of new molecular entities (industry jargon for brand new drugs) is not the only measure of innovation. A truly great medicine is worth a whole lot of me-too pills. But it’s a start.”

The Most Productive Drug Firms

Source: InnoThink Center for Research in Biomedical Innovation, FDA
Note: Sanofi, Sanofi-Synthelabo, and Sanofi-Aventis should probably be counted as one company. Pfizer acquired Wyeth in 2009.