The Change Mariner

Biotech: A Risky Bet on Antibiotics?

BusinessWeek:

Forget genomics. Forget original drug research. Many biotech companies have. Eager for reliable revenue streams, biotechs are increasingly looking to an area that the pharmaceutical industry has long overlooked -- antibacterial drugs, better knows as antibiotics.

The trend of biotechs turning to antibacterials -- once the domain of companies like Aventis and Bristol-Myers Squibb-- has been decades in the making. After the stunning success of such groundbreaking drugs as penicillin and amoxicillin, the pharmaceutical industry has seen little reason to bring new antibiotics to market. Also, the bigger payoffs to large drug companies come from medicines for chronic conditions such as depression and high cholesterol, not acute bacterial infections.

Yet the need for new antibiotics has only grown, as bacteria strains develop resistance to already available medications.

Posted by Timothy Fredel at March 14, 2004 07:32 PM | TrackBack
Related Categories: Industry - Pharmaceutical/Biotech | Quadrant - Technological | Theme - 'The Biotech Century' | Theme - 'The New Age of Germs'

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