Pharmaceuticals

This is a good case study as an example of an unstructured case interview. Unstructured case interviews are often seen in a final round interview and are given by Principals or Partners. Get our top tips for solving cases like these here. Want to work with an MBB coach to prep for unstructured cases? Click here to learn more and get started.

Case Study Prompt

Two large branded pharmaceutical companies are merging. The head of development (pre- clinical and clinical) has a declining budget and wants to re-think his portfolio. He currently uses a spreadsheet to evaluate his portfolio which contains columns for the chemical name, estimated launch date, and lead indication.

• There are 60 drugs in development with 1/3 in clinical trials, 2/3 in pre-clinical development.
• It takes 10 years to bring a drug from pre-clinical to launch and there is large attrition along the way.
• Assume that this is a U.S. launch only, that there is no bundling, and that each compound represents a novel therapy.

Essentially, your client wants you to add a column for the current market value of the partially developed drug so that he can evaluate which ones to push through development.

How do you do it?