1 - The bioscience sector: challenges and opportunities

Abstract

Initially a term used to describe an emerging set of technologies, ‘biotech’ has become shorthand for a large part of the life science industry, a distinct sub-sector of smaller companies with their own culture and dynamics. Managing smaller companies requires a different skill set from that needed to succeed in academia or in larger pharmaceutical companies and the needs of this first group that our book aims to address. Knowledge of the greater landscape is essential to locate one’s own company successfully in this ecosystem. This opening chapter to A Biotech Manager’s Handbook provides an accessible, informal, but well-informed overview of the main themes and drivers for change in the ‘biotech sector’ and the challenges and opportunities for those working in it. We identify three major trends that have profoundly shaped the sector over recent decades: the information revolution, which has reduced the cost of producing and sharing biological data, but has opened up a host of new challenges associated with the interpretation of emerging science; a revolution in industrial organisation, where larger pharmaceutical companies are merging and shedding capacity while an entire ecosystem of smaller companies has sprung up providing services and products to larger established companies comprising everything from screening technologies, testing services and specialist knowledge all the way through to drug candidates. Investors have shown cycles of interest in these companies, looking for ways to derive value from an enormous boom in scientific knowledge. The final trend is an investment boom, as governments and private investors have sought to exploit biotech for social and economic gains. At the same time, challenges abound as R&D costs spiral due to the interaction of factors associated with new science, technology, markets and uncertainty. For the prepared, opportunities also arise as nimble new industry players bring better, faster or cheaper solutions to a growing number of potential partners in a global industry aimed at bringing improvements in health whilst also generating a return on increasingly high-risk investments.