PHARMACEUTICAL INDUSTRY : FRESH FOCUS ON INNOVATION.

Pharmaceutical firms focused for years on the most profitable niche markets (cholesterol, heart failure, inflammation, etc). As a result, for these major pathologies there is a wide range of very similar treatments that are hard to improve and increasingly generic.

"Caught up in a spiral of mega-mergers, pharmaceutical groups became larger and larger, but also less and less innovative. Their research and development (R&D), weakened by successive mergers, became fossilised in these huge structures." This conclusion(1), drawn by the industry itself, materialised in a severe restructuring of research centres and massive job losses.

Research is evolving, however: biotechnology products are gaining momentum, new prospects are emerging in prevention...