Big Pharma teeters on the edge of a patent cliff that could strip away $300 billion — a sixth of the industry’s overall revenue — by 2030, according to an Evaluate report. The high-altitude, high-stakes test will determine which companies are nimble enough to keep their footing.
Not all major pharma companies face the same exposure. Some, like Eli Lilly and Novo Nordisk, appear poised to sail through, experiencing the best of both worlds with limited patent exposure and massive earnings from GLP-1 weight loss drugs.
Others, like Bristol Myers Squibb, face a more daunting challenge. The pharma giant’s blockbuster blood thinner Eliquis and cancer immunotherapy Opdivo are among the top-earning drugs going off patent, leaving the company with the largest growth gap among its peers at about $38 billion according to the report. Eliquis and Opdivo together comprise more than half of BMS’s earnings.
Merck & Co. and Pfizer also face mounting odds as they seek to close gaps of $23 and $21 billion, respectively.
Already, some major drugmakers appear to be succeeding at navigating this historic shift, often with a multi-pronged approach. While dealmaking is a critical means of building a strong pipeline of new medicines to offset the losses, it’s not always easy to find the right match for a company’s existing pipeline, said Jessica Merrill, a senior editor at Scrip in an Evaluate webinar.
Those that are successful at making up for these massive losses look beyond M&A and employ other approaches such as delaying patent expirations, moving into new drug development territory and refocusing to generate momentum, she said.
J&J’s patent exposure delay through innovation
Johnson & Johnson is selling itself as a patent cliff success story, even if it still faces challenges ahead. J&J’s blockbuster autoimmune drug Stelara already faces biosimilar competition, contributing to a potential $15 million revenue gap, according to the report.
And Darzalex is next. J&J’s multiple myeloma drug with almost $18 billion in 2024 sales makes up 27% of its portfolio and will soon face its own patent cliff.
But J&J is making up ground, judging by its most recent earnings report with more than $24 billion in quarterly sales and a 6% increase in annual overall sales, exceeding market expectations. The company framed 2025 as a “catapult year.”
Among J&J’s strategies are efforts to make the company leaner and more pharma focused, and building out a slate of new drugs that includes the CAR-T cell therapy Carvykti, which achieved blockbuster status for the first time last year.
To navigate the Stelara patent cliff, J&J also held the line by delaying some of its biosimilar competition. As a result, the drug still eked out just over $6 billion in sales in 2025. While still a drop from $10 billion in 2024, the drug retained its crown as the company’s best-selling immunology asset.
The combination approach J&J has taken shows how companies can find a way forward even amid blockbuster losses.
Merck’s focus on R&D and collaboration
Merck also needs to bolster its position as it prepares for cancer juggernaut Keytruda, the best-selling drug in the world, to lose exclusivity. Sales of the drug, which represent more than half of the company’s sales, are expected to peak around $32 billion in 2026 and then trail off amid biosimilar competition.
The company is hoping to offset those losses with its easier-to-administer Keytruda alternative, Keytruda Qlex, a reformulation that analysts project could bring in $7 billion in sales by early 2032.
Distinguishing Merck’s approach is its focus on diversification and pipeline expansion into new areas like ophthalmology, Merrill said. It’s also betting that newly acquired drugs and expanded indications for others will help it gain lost ground, she added.
While the company is expanding into newer areas, it also retains a distinct focus on cancer treatments, with 16 oncology drugs in its pipeline. These include its foray into the potentially game-changing multi-specific market with the PD1/VEGF bispecific antibody LM-299 from LaNova Medicines. Other cancer drugs in its pipeline include the antibody-drug conjugate sac-TMT, which is being tested in six types of cancer, and a KRAS G12C inhibitor drug for non-small cell lung cancer and colorectal cancer.
“Obviously they have a big challenge ahead, but I think it’s also a very interesting time to be following Merck and some of the things that they’re doing,” Merrill said.
AbbVie’s blueprint for resilience
Companies can also take a lesson from AbbVie, a poster child for successfully navigating exclusivity losses that Evaluate cited as a case study in resilience.
AbbVie’s strategy to overcome the patent expiration for its blockbuster Humira involved nestling the drug’s intellectual property in a series of patent thickets and hammering out settlement agreements with biosimilar competitors to delay competition, which gave it time to establish rising autoimmune stars Rinvoq and Skyrizi. These two relative newcomers have helped push the company toward a projected $60 billion in sales in 2025.
The company also used M&A to put itself on a better trajectory to withstand the Humira hit through deals with Allergan, Cerevel Therapeutics and ImmunoGen.
“AbbVie has successfully tapered its reliance on Humira: from 39% of revenues in 2022 to 9% expected in 2025, while the next generation is rising from 14% to 43% in the same period,” according to the Evaluate report.
