The Future of Drug Development
In an age in which so much of medical science is utterly incomprehensible--even to other scientists--it's comforting to remind ourselves from time to time that a lot of what passes for modern medicine is simply the refinement and repackaging of ancient remedies. Digitalis from foxglove. Opiates from poppies. Aspirin from the bark of willow trees. Even now, nearly 60% of the best-selling prescription drugs in America's pharmacies are based on compounds taken directly from Mother Nature's well-stocked armamentarium. It's as if there were a bright, healing thread running from the medicine bags of shamans and witch doctors to today's drugs for cancer, Alzheimer's and heart disease.
But that's about to change. With the mapping of the genome--the twisted double strand of DNA that carries the instructions for making every cell in the human body--the process by which new drugs are developed is being turned upside down. Trial and error, which is how medicines have been discovered for the past 100 years (and for millenniums before that), is yielding to drugs by design. Increasingly scientists, armed with blueprints for our genes, can identify the individual molecules that make us susceptible to a particular disease. With that information--and some high-speed silicon-age machinery--they can build new molecules that home in on their targets like well-aimed arrows.How will this change our lives? The drugs we take? The pains we suffer? The diseases that finally do us in?
The excitement and the hype surrounding human genome sequencing stems from hope that the genome can be used to help determine the underlying causes of diseases. Once the genome yields its secrets, the goal is to treat diseases and not merely symptoms, and to provide cures and not just therapies.
The changes and the answers are or will be as surprising as the science that is producing them from the labs of universities, hospitals, private research facilitites, pharmaceutical companies and biotechnology companies.
Although still considered a nascent industry, the biotechnology industry has an interesting history. In the U.S., where the industry is more well developed than the rest of the world, it was dominated in its early years by a handful of U.S. firms including Amgen, Biogen and Genentech. During the late 1980s these were the only companies that appeared to have products on the market that were earning substantial profits.
The bull market in biotechnology stocks reached a peak in 1991 and was largely driven by the blockbuster success of two drugs, Epogen and Neupogen produced by one company, Amgen. Following Amgen's success, analysts began to praise nearly every company in the biotechnology sector with a product remotely close to market that year as the next Amgen which cause stock prices to climb.
In 1992 and 1993, biotechnology stocks took a turn for the worse. Concerns about President Bill Clinton's proposed healthcare reforms and the failure of a few high profile biotechnology drugs sent the sector into a three-year slump.
The defeat of the Clinton administration's health care reform effort and no prospects for major revision, except perhaps in Medicare, helped the biotech industry rebound in 1995. There was genuine interest in reforming the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and tackling product liability issues sent positive signals for the industry. A renewed belief in biotech research providing some of the remedies for rising health care costs also helped the industry's resurgence. Doubt gave way to a mood of optimism culminating in a renewed interest in the potential of biotechnology stocks came by in 1999. The resurgent of biotechnology was lead by the completion of the human genome in the year 2000, but the work is far from over and the benefits that will eventually come from mapping the human genome. The science and the story is just starting.
We, at BioTech Sage Report take the stance that biotechnology is where the computer industry was 30 years ago and like the computer, biotechnology is going to have a large impact on your lives than you can imagine over the next 20 years. The fact is, in times of bad or good, people will need medicine. And in the process, it's going to make investors who realize that, a lot of money. So, investors with a long-term view should take advantage of the ``unusual opportunity'' to accumulate or buy biotechnology stocks.
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