You know the big-pharma club is in trouble when most of its members are jumping ship from fighting against generics to producing generics themselves. Novartis, GSK, Sanofi and Daiichi are just a few examples of this and now Merck becomes the latest in the list with its announcment last week concerning the creation of ‘Merck Bio-Ventures’ which will focus on becoming a leader in bio-generics, generic versions of biotech products.

Things sure are changing very rapidly for the large pharma companies as Merck’s chief executive, Richard Clark, seems to have noticed: “Next year will continue to be a period of fundamental transformation that establishes Merck as a different competitor for the next decade.”

Merck has definitely chosen the right niche within generics to be in, since the high barriers to entry in bio-generics, a result of the difficulty and high cost of development and registration of the products, allow them to operate in a high-margin yet low-competition segment of the market. Merck’s first planned product will be MK-2578 for anaemia, a generic version of Amgen’s best-selling drug Aranesp.