Walter, Here's what Reuters had to say about Biotech's upcoming goldern era:
WASHINGTON, April 10 - More
than 300 different biotechnology
medicines are in development,
including vaccines against cancer and
drugs to treat a whole range of
diseases, U.S. drugmakers say.
Nearly half the drugs in development,
151 out of 350, are meant to fight cancer,
the annual report by Pharmaceutical
Research and and Manufacturers of America
(PhRMA) found.
It said 140 different pharmaceutical and
biotechnology companies were working on
the drugs.
"This is a whole new era that we are
moving into and people aren't even noticing,"
Dr. John Siegfried, deputy vice president for
science and regulatory affairs at PhRMA
said in a telephone interview.
"It's an incredibly exciting time to see
disease begin to be attacked at the genetic
level, at the chromosome level. My god,
when I started to practice, that was unheard
of. It was Buck Rogers stuff, and now it's
happening."
Flu, Cancer Vaccines
Biotechnology medicines in development
include a flu vaccine being developed by
Protein Sciences of Meriden, Connecticut,
Chiron Corp's Proleukin skin cancer drug
and Biomira Inc's cancer vaccine.
Proleukin, already licensed for treating
renal cell cancer that has spread throughout
the body, is a genetically engineered version
of interleukin-2 (IL-2), a naturally occurring
immune system signaling chemical.
It stimulates the body to destroy
abnormal cancer cells.
Biomira's vaccine alerts the body's
immune system to the presence of MUC-1,
a protein found on the surface of 90 percent
of common solid tumors including breast,
ovarian and lung cancer. It is being tested in
non-small cell lung cancer, of which there are
an estimated 149,000 new cases in North
America each year, killing 133,000 people.
"We used to think that vaccines were
only for diphtheria, pertussis for kids. and all
of a sudden you have tons of vaccines for
cancer, as a preventative in AIDS," said
Siegfried.
The whole point of biotechnology is to
tweak the body's own defenses, Siegfried
said.
"If you look at it holistically, that's really
what the body's been doing all along
anyway," he said.
Patent Battle Approaches
The road ahead is not all rosy, PhRMA
warns. For instance, patent battles loom,
such as a fight over who owns the rights to
the BRCA1 and BRCA2 breast cancer
genes and a lawsuit over genetically altered
seeds that Mycogen Plant Sciences lost
against Monsanto in February.
"Patent protection is really the basis of
our industry and my guess is if there is a
conflict in patents, which is almost inevitable
in the genetic business, they are going to be
very hard fought," Siegfried said.
There were also ethical issues, he said.
"The whole concept of messing around
with genes-people may say 'I don't want to
do it but if you tell me that messing around
with his genes will save my son then I am
going to want to do it'," he said.
There were plenty of new targets to
choose from, the report, which lists all 350
new medicines, said. With an estimated
100,000 genes in the human body, and new
ones being mapped daily, companies had
their work laid out.
"The modern tools of biotechnology,
coupled with computer technology's ability
to analyze massive amounts of data quickly
-help scientists determine which genes or
proteins are defective," it said.
"We can accomplish in the lab now in a
couple of hours what used to take a year,"
Siegfried said. |
