
Select top biotech drugs based on revenue 2021
Best-selling biotech drugs worldwide
AbbVie’s Humira is among the top selling biotechnology drugs in the world, generating nearly 21 billion U.S. dollars in 2021. Biotechnology has become more prevalent within the pharmaceutical industry. One of the first uses of biotechnology was for human insulin. The United States had around 1,160 dedicated biotechnology companies in 2019. However, one of the largest biotechnology companies in the world is headquartered in Basel, Switzerland. Roche generated some 41 billion U.S. dollars in biotech prescription drug revenues in 2019 and is expected to reach over 48 billion U.S. dollars in 2026. One of its top selling drugs, Avastin, generated about 2.8 billion U.S. dollars in revenue in 2021. Avastin is a drug derived from biotechnology that is used to inhibit the growth of new blood vessels to treat some types of cancer.
The United States spent about 78 billion U.S. dollars on research and development in the biotechnology sector in 2019. The United States also had about 36 percent of the world’s share of filed biotechnology patents in 2018, in comparison, Germany filed around six percent of global biotech patents.