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Region's pharmaceutical sector on growth path
The global market value stands at $460 billion, growing 18 per cent annually. The industry will surge to $625 billion by 2009, research has revealed.
- By Nadia Saleem, Staff reporter
- Published: 00:30 May 2, 2008
Dubai: The regional pharmaceutical and biotechnology industry is valued at $12 billion, and growing at a rate of 10 per cent annually, according to reports.
"Initiatives are being fuelled by the development of free zones offering 100 per cent ownership and a host of other benefits. Already in the Middle East, there are estimated to be over 450 pharmaceutical manufacturers - a figure that is growing dramatically year on year," said Simon Page, group director of life sciences for organisers of Pharmaceutical and Bio-technology Middle East exhibition 2008, IRR Middle East.
The global market value stands at $460 billion, growing 18 per cent annually. The industry will surge to $625 billion by 2009, research has revealed.
"In the Middle East, the total value of the market is currently estimated to be in excess of $10 billion and is registering growth rates of 15-18 per cent," said Page. There is set to be a huge boom in the biotechnology industry in the region, once again through private and public investment."
Speaking at the conference, Tim Bols, director of government affairs, Europe, Amgen international, the world's largest biotechnology company, based in California, US, said ,"Biotechnology treatment is available for 10,000 of 30,000 known diseases."
"There are already 200 biotechnology therapeutics available, many waiting approval and thousands in clinical trials, 300 in late stages," he said. Almost 50 per cent of all drugs in clinical trials are of biotechnology origin, he added.
Bols claimed that 325 million people have been treated with biotechnology.
Bols said that though the future of medicine is in biotechnology, the industry is a difficult one.
According to a research of US biotechnology companies, there are few success stories.
"Out of 1800 companies that started in the 1980s, 300 went public, the others stayed in the research stage or government funding. Out of the 1,800, only 33 are profitable today, some of which have been taken over by larger pharmaceutical companies. Only six of the 33 companies have made more money than they have spent," Bols said.
Of further obstructions, Bols said, "The cost of developing a single drug is somewhere between $800 million and $1 billion."
"The whole sector has spent $80 billion in investment since the early 1980s and has generated only $30 billion in revenues," Bols said.
He said the whole industry has been a loss-making exercise. In the future, however this will not be the case, he said. Companies now can profit by using the research and development that others carried out at a loss.
Steven Burrill, chief executive officer, Burrill & Company, said that he sees a growing role for the Arabian Gulf in biotechnology as a result of developments such as Dubiotech as well as others such as a $1 billion healthcare city near Muscat.
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