Bioengineering

Natural Product Pharmaceuticals – The third generation By Dr Melanie McCullagh Compounds derived from natural products have made a big impact on the pharmaceutical industry. Of the 1,010 NCEs approved between January 1981 and June 2006, 43 were unaltered natural products (NPs) and a further 232 (23%) were second generation NP derivatives (1). The second […]

Prediction versus Attrition in Drug Discovery & Development By Professor Malcolm Young The research-intensive part of the pharmaceutical industry is facing unusual commercial difficulties, whose elements are now well-known. A substantial number of very valuable drugs have gone, or are about to go, off patent; too few good new premium drugs are coming through to […]

Nanotechnology in High Throughput Screening By Dr Bobak Azamian and Flora Tang Nanotechnology has touched many scientific disciplines, from its roots in chemistry and physics to applications in biology and engineering (1). A nanotechnology industry has developed, offering at present a new iteration of established technologies such as composite materials and semiconductor chips, and also […]

Bio Business in Asia – Fiction or Fact? By Dr Guy Heathers This article discusses development of successful indigenous biotechnology industries in Asia. Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan – three countries that have made the development of a biotechnology industry a cornerstone of their transformation from world-leading manufacturing economies to new, ‘knowledge-intensive’ economies of the […]