The year 2021 witnessed the global approval of vaccines and drugs amid COVID-19. The disease has been dominating the headlines from the last two years.

No one is amazed that COVID vaccines and drugs find a place in top selling drugs this time. Pfizer & BioNTech’s Comirnaty took the first position with $36B revenue and became the best-selling drug of the year.

Despite the market is flooded with COVID-19 related products, AbbVie’s Humira (adalimumab) scores second position with $20.7B in revenue. It accounted for approximately 37% of AbbVie's total net revenues in 2021.

Merck & Co’s showed strong sales of Keytruda ($17.8B). Due to the dominant position of anti-PD-1 monoclonal antibody in 1L NSCLC and its continued expansion to other tumor types, its sales are expected to grow in the next few years. As Humira’s patent expiration is in 2023, Keytruda is expected to surpass Humira's sales in 2024. Therefore, we can expect Keytruda to be on the top of the list (excluding the COVID-19 vaccines and drugs).

We at PharmaShots plan to publish a detailed report of top drugs every month (the last Thursday of the month). To maintain the continuity in PharmaShots Series, we prepared a list of top selling drugs, excluding the COVID drugs and vaccines.

Watch out for the detailed article on Humira planned to be posted tomorrow. Stay tuned with PharmaShots.