The pharmaceuticals industry is, perhaps fittingly given its purpose, defined by portfolio regeneration. Patents on blockbuster drugs expire, allowing generic companies to muscle in and produce the same drug at a low cost.

New drugs, which take 10 years to go from molecule discovery to launch, come on line. Over the past five years, many have found a gap between those two events. But, after a long period of stress and strain, the so called patent cliff - a phenomenon where several of a company's drug patents expire in a short period of time - has been successfully traversed by many.