Pharmaceutical companies facing a steep patent cliff are concluding the key to future profits may be customized treatments tailored to patients' genes and lifestyles — not blockbusters aimed at large patient populations.

Why it matters: The pivot could influence which diseases get treated in the decades to come, and how much the health system pays.

The stakes are huge. More than $500 billion in brand-name drug sales is potentially at risk from generic competition between 2026 and 2032, according to the consulting firm Evaluate.

The latest: The race is on to find new treatments that each generate at least $2.4 billion in global sales, a new Iqvia Institute report finds.

They're increasingly specialty treatments, biologics and rare disease drugs — with a small group of flagship products accounting for an outsized share of industry sales.

GLP-1 drugs like Novo Nordisk's Ozempic and Eli Lilly's Zepbound now define that elite category.…