BioTech

Challenge in evaluating the biotech business is deciding what the space encompasses. At a minimum, biotech is synonymous with the high-stakes pharmaceutical industry. However, even with this narrow perspective, the number and range of stakeholders involved in the biotech value chain is significant. Bringing a drug to market involves equipment manufacturers, highly skilled researchers, research and production facilities, a fulfillment infrastructure, a score of legal personnel to handle patents and liability issues, a marketing and sales force, advertising agencies, journals, and other media outlets. The pharmaceutical industry affects retail drug stores, hospital formularies, third-party payers, physicians, and, ultimately, their patients. A broad interpretation of biotech incorporates pharmaceuticals as well as dozens of other industries, from dairy, brewing, and computing, to medicine, the chemical industry, academia, materials manufacturing and the military. For example, the production of yogurt, cheese, and baked bread are as reliant on genetically manipulated microorganisms as is the production insulin produced by bacteria that have been genetically modified through recombinant DNA technology. For practical purposes, a reasonable compromise in discussing the biotech industry is to focus on the six interdependent categories that will most likely dominate the field over the next decade: pharmaceuticals, medicine, agriculture, biomaterials, computing, and military applications. The common thread that runs through these categories that will continue to fundamentally shape the biotech industry is dependence on the function of genes at the molecular level. Our knowledge of genes and their application in each of these areas didn’t suddenly appear with the preliminary sequencing of the human genome in 2000 or the complete sequencing in April 2003, but has roots that extend back across the millennia. Recent advances made possible by the industrial and chemical revolutions of the 18th and 19th centuries and the technology revolution of the 20th century are especially significant. The following sections provide an overview of the progression of technologies and markets in each of the six key categories of the biotech industry.