13 March 2012 | News | By Nandita Singh
"2012 will be the year when the pharma industry will begin to fragment rather than consolidate. The trend of companies breaking up R&D into smaller, leaner units and, in some cases, making them independent of the company will continue. I also predict it will spill over into smaller, leaner marketing and sales units at big pharma companies. This will set up the pharma industry for its eventual fate as a seller of drugs and devices innovated in start-up companies and smaller biotech companies. The effect of these changes will be continued growth in CROs - discovery, development and commercialization. This growth in CROs is inevitably accompanied by job losses in the pharma sector."