While making money in drug delivery has always been tougher than its boosters have promised, this year's been ugly in new and disturbing ways. The key lessons of Pfizer's abandonment of inhaled insulin and Impax's patent assault on Endo's Opana are that partners are less reliable; the products need to be medically superior to existing ones, not simply more convenient; and generic companies are making inroads into the main bastion of drug-delivery success -- spec pharma.

Roche/Genentech oncology partnering maintained a robust dealmaking pace through the pandemic, keeping the percentage of partnered R&D programs at about 50% of the cancer drug pipeline.

To mitigate pandemic disruption of component supply chains, the US FDA said it will downgrade some post-approval change categories for sterile drug container closure systems. The downgrade will cover drugs in shortage and those used to treat COVID-19.