Eli Lilly tops new biopharma ranking on launch success, development speed

Biotech Eli Lilly tops new biopharma ranking on launch success, development speed By Will Maddox Jul 28, 2026 1:00pm Eli Lilly Vertex Pharmaceuticals Roche Novo Nordisk Flush with GLP-1 cash and pipeline success, Eli Lilly rose from 16th to first over five years in Norstella’s inaugural Pipeline-to-Patient Productivity Index (P3i), which evaluated 25 large, global biopharma companies on R&D productivity, market access and commercial performance. Norstella designed the index to give biopharma funders more information about how companies are performing and help guide their portfolio decisions. Norstella CEO Mike Gallup said an industry requiring the time and capital investment of biopharma needs a clearer scoreboard to track success.

“It is the first benchmark to follow a molecule across the entire journey: from disclosure through clinical risk, into market access and on to commercial return,” he said. Report author Dan Chancellor, Norstella’s vice president of thought leadership, told Fierce Biotech that Lilly was the clear top-performing company. However, Norstella emphasized companies’ performance across the individual criteria rather than publishing a complete first-to-25th ranking.

The index set benchmarks for pipeline creation ($108 million per new drug), development timeline (9.3 years from phase 1 to approval), launch coverage (68.3% coverage at one year), launch performance ($1.6 billion in revenue after seven years) and other measures to evaluate 25 companies over the course of several years. The benchmarks are intended to show how successfully biopharma companies discover and develop new medicines, make them available to patients and deliver a sustainable return on investment. Lilly’s aggregate score was driven by strong results in launch performance, portfolio replacement and development timelines.

While its GLP-1 franchise contributed to its top launch-performance score, that was only one of the index’s eight benchmarks. Lilly’s strong early-failures score also suggests it has been effective at identifying and discontinuing unsuccessful programs during phase 1. "Relative to its R&D budget, Lilly has a very productive pipeline.

Lilly has above average success rates for its clinical trials, and even when it is failing, because everyone fails, it's been very successful at identifying those failures at phase 1," Chancellor said. According to the report, other companies that have outperformed in both commercialization and R&D are Novo Nordisk, Roche, Vertex Pharmaceuticals, Daiichi Sankyo and UCB. While Roche, Novo and Lilly scoring highly is no surprise, the three smaller overperformers have found success through specialization, Chancellor said.

Vertex's focus on cystic fibrosis and a couple of other indications has allowed it to have one of the best clinical development timelines in the industry, at 5.8 years. "It has that super focus where it knows its disease area, it knows its prescribers and it's able to operate very efficiently," Chancellor said. Daiichi Sankyo’s specialization in antibody-drug conjugates and UCB’s focus on immunology have helped the companies develop high-quality candidates and advance them relatively quickly.

"UCB is growing incredibly quickly and maturing and rapidly knocking on the door of the top 20 pharma companies from what was a relatively small epilepsy specialist," Chancellor added. Some companies are better in one area and aren't as strong in the other. Pfizer and Sanofi scored well in R&D, but commercially haven't outperformed benchmarks.

Meanwhile, GSK, J&J and Novartis have done well commercially while lagging in R&D. The analysis also identifies companies that have struggled across the board, with Takeda lagging behind others in R&D and commercialization. Biogen, Gilead, CSL and Otsuka also struggled.

The report noted that pipeline creation slowed by 32% over the last five years, despite R&D spending increasing 45%. The top 25 biopharma companies added 2,203 new drugs to their pipelines in the last five years, and about 60% originated within large pharma. The report notes that companies are becoming more selective, operating smaller pipelines and managing risk.

"Companies that are able to discontinue or halt clinical development early are able to have higher phase 3 success rates, so we're seeing a real shift in risk profiles," Chancellor said. "Companies have large early pipelines, but heavy attrition, so that those drugs that are making it to mid- and late-stage trials have the best chance at succeeding commercially and moving the needle in terms of becoming a valuable new therapy." The index also found that the median drug development timeline reached 10.5 years in 2025, up from 7.6 years in 2011. Phase 1 timelines increased 93% over that period, while phase 2 and phase 3 timelines grew 19% and 43%, respectively.

Timelines varied by therapy area. A typical metabolic drug program took 8.4 years to move from phase 1 through approval, compared with 10.8 years for a central nervous system drug. The lengthening drug development timeline also suggests that, despite the hype around AI’s potential to transform R&D, the technology has yet to reverse the trend.

Chancellor said the pool of patients eligible for clinical trials has changed little over the past 15 to 20 years, even as the number of trials and companies competing to enroll them has proliferated. Once a drug enters clinical development, phase 2 presents the biggest hurdle. The P3i found that 33.1% of candidates successfully advance from phase 2, compared with 41.6% in phase 1 and 61.1% in phase 3.

Among drugs submitted for FDA review, 97% are approved. Approval, however, does not guarantee that a drug will reach patients. The index found wide variation in market access across therapeutic areas.

Metabolic drugs had the lowest coverage one year after launch, at 52.3%, largely because of managed access to GLP-1 medicines. Oncology drugs had the highest coverage, reaching 78.1% of covered lives. Rising drug development costs, lengthening timelines and difficulties enrolling clinical trials are among the challenges facing large biopharma companies, which also contend with public skepticism about their profits and credibility.

Chancellor said the index provides investors and consumers with an objective way to evaluate biopharma productivity while also offering insight into the challenges companies face. "If you're able to communicate some of the challenges that pharmas face, then it might go a long way to show that it's a really tough business and that they are not profiting at the expense of patients," he said. Eli Lilly Vertex Pharmaceuticals Roche Novo Nordisk Daiichi Sankyo UCB Norstella drug development R&D Research Biotech