For decades, life sciences companies have supplied research tools to help scientists discover the biological basis for life and develop ways to overcome disease. To understand more than the cellular microscopic structure of organisms, the research tools became increasingly sophisticated so that scientists are now able to visualise and model what is happening within cells. This has given us a deeper understanding of how our bodies work at a molecular level – what makes each individual the way he or she is and why we are prone to illness and disease.

These developments were facilitated by the introduction of products to separate molecules and to label and identify them. Products such as these now offer routine techniques for standard life sciences research today.

The uncovering of the molecular structure of genes in the 1950s was the start of the revolution in molecular biology. Genes live in the core of a cell and contain DNA, the recipe for the creation of all the proteins needed in a particular organism. Proteins are the building blocks of life. They form the structure, the machinery, the messaging systems and the control mechanisms for all the activities of a cell and they are specialised in different organs.

A growing understanding of the complex interactions between genes and the thousands of proteins in a cell began to shed light on diseases caused by differences in the genetic recipe or specific proteins. To understand this complexity and to be able to find a small molecular difference in a million, like a needle in a haystack, companies have developed increasingly advanced systems for biological analysis. These began with manual processes involving, for example, the use of products to sequence or identify the order of the letters of the DNA in a gene. But the pace has accelerated. Today, biological research is becoming industrialised with very high throughput automated systems.

This intensive research has begun to identify molecules that are part of a disease process and may therefore be a target for drug intervention. In parallel, the systemised work of chemists has identified thousands of possible drug compounds. As a result, life sciences companies have developed new systems to help pharmaceutical companies screen potential drug compounds against target molecules. For pharmaceutical companies, speed is the name of the game. The sooner they can verify, test and get a new drug to market, the quicker their return on the discovery and development investment. Today this is typically over £300 million over seven years for each potential drug.

Since the 1980s, there has been another revolution in the life sciences world – the biotech revolution. Using industrialised techniques that were extended from the research laboratory tools into a manufacturing environment, companies found they could manufacture biological molecules. This opened new possibilities in the manufacture of pure, safe and cost-effective biomedicines or biopharmaceuticals.

In 2000, the genomics revolution arrived, marked by the completion of the first draft sequence of a human genome. Now the search is on to identify genetic differences that result in illness or can be used to predict a tendency towards a specific disease. Furthermore, some genetic differences will indicate which drug will be most successful in treating a disease for a particular person, leading to the development of personalised medicine and saving the time, cost and potential damage of trying different drugs. Adverse drug reaction is currently the fourth leading cause of death in the US.

These next steps will need yet more innovations in the research tools, continuing to increase throughput but also using miniaturisation. These will include such systems as microarrays to look at how the genetic recipe is translated differently in healthy and diseased tissues (a process called gene expression) and systems to pinpoint tiny genetic differences with markers called SNPs, that can help in mapping genes or in uncovering disease-related differences.

The genomics revolution has also heralded the arrival of another buzz word – proteomics, or the study of proteins. Interconnected systems are being created to establish what are effectively ‘protein factories’ where researchers can rapidly uncover the structure and function of proteins.

Bioinformatics is yet another new area of growing importance, since handling the mountain of data collected by such production environments has created a need for highly sophisticated information systems.

The more scientists learn, the more the interactive relationships between proteins, genes, predisposition to disease, differing responsiveness to drugs and drug development seems to blur the boundaries between these fields.

Industry trends
Mapping a human genome in 15 years was made possible by the industrialisation of life sciences research. Innovations in automation, miniaturisation of intelligent data collection and analysis have all accelerated genetic research and are now taking on a similar challenge in proteomics. Today there are as many as 600 sites worldwide where this production-style research is carried out, in large academic centres of excellence as well as in pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies.

The wider global market for general research products and services is still highly fragmented with thousands of suppliers selling to hundreds of thousands of customers, each with many end users. The customer base consists of pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies, privately and publicly funded research organisations, hospitals, medical schools and universities. Total annual sales are estimated to have a value of over £13 billion per year and are forecast to grow at five or six per cent. Some segments, however, are growing much more quickly.

A key driving force is the pharmaceutical and biotechnology customer, for whom strong commercial value has to be generated through efficiency and high productivity systems. In 2000 these companies are projected to spend over £38 billion on R&D, an increase of 7.5 per cent on the previous year.

Trends in the European pharmaceutical and biotech industry have been towards consolidation, largely in response to pharmaceutical companies’ attempts to meet market expectations of seven to 10 per cent revenue growth with a 20 per cent operating margin. In North America, pharmaceutical companies are benefiting from strong sales growth. Overall, the average R&D expenditure for a pharmaceutical company is stable at around 17 per cent of sales. Companies are continuing to focus on improving the efficiency of the drug discovery process by increasing speed, reducing cost and lowering the failure rate. As a result, the technology to enable this efficiency improvement is one of the fastest growing segments of the life sciences market.

Many countries outside Europe and North America are now seeing biotechnology and healthcare as potential economic growth vehicles. Their advantages are the ability to leapfrog more established science communities in the adoption of industrialised research tools and their own nations’ valuable genetic diversity – from pathogens to crops or their own human populations. They are investing heavily in education and research funding. For example, India now has 50 universities producing 500 biotech scientists a year. Brazil has used £165 million of funding to involve 200 scientists at 62 laboratories.

Growth in pharmaceutical and biotechnology R&D expenditure

Life sciences market (continued) »