FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
April 13, 1998
Contact:
Jackie Cottrell
(202) 835-3467
PhRMA SURVEY FINDS REVOLUTION IN BIOTECHNOLOGY LEADING TO PROMISE OF NEW MEDICINES
Washington, D.C. -- The biotechnology revolution in medicine has gained remarkable momentum with pharmaceutical companies discovering and developing new therapies that were unimaginable just 20 years ago. The first biotechnology drug was introduced in 1981 and now there are 54 approved medicines helping 60 million patients. But that is just the beginning. A newly-released survey highlights 350 more biotechnology medicines in testing for a host of diseases including cancer, AIDS, heart disease and more, according to the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA).
"Biotechnology medicines are already saving the lives of people with heart attacks, cystic fibrosis, hemophilia, and cancer, and raising the quality of life for people with stroke, kidney disease, diabetes and other diseases," said PhRMA President Alan F. Holmer in releasing the survey. "The promise of biotechnology is even greater. We have to keep pushing the frontiers of science until that promise is fully realized."
With modern biological science, much greater understanding about the underlying cause of disease, the ways in which drugs operate, and how to create new therapies is possible. New technologies with such high-tech names as combinatorial chemistry, high-throughput screening and laboratories-on-a-chip offer better and quicker ways to turn the new knowledge into molecules, both conventional and biotech, for testing.
The survey found that 28 of the biotechnology medicines in development target heart disease, the leading killer of Americans, while 151 target cancer, the second leading cause of death. In addition, there are 29 medicines for AIDS, 36 for infectious disease and 26 for neurologic diseases such as multiple sclerosis, Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease.
Companies are testing 77 vaccines, including 17 that show promise in treating melanoma, a deadly form of skin cancer that kills more than 7,000 people a year. There are also 74 monoclonal antibodies in development, including some that may hinder the growth of tumors by cutting off their blood supply.
Biotechnology medicines use novel technologies to fight disease -- technologies such as gene therapy are a hope for the future. In one experimental gene therapy, doctors at New York Hospital-Cornell Medical Center recently injected a gene directly into the heart muscle of a 60-year-old man in a "bio bypass" designed to prompt the heart to grow its own bypass around a clogged artery. If the Food and Drug Administration approves this therapy as safe and effective, it could help many patients avoid coronary bypass surgery.
This potential treatment is one of 38 gene therapies being tested. Companies are working on dozens of other new approaches. These include antisense technology, which blocks the signals that tell an unwanted cell -- such as a cancer cell -- to grow; vaccines, which activate the body's immune system to fight disease, and monoclonal antibodies, "magic bullets" that seek out and destroy their targets such as cancer cells.
The Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA) represents the country's leading research-based pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies, which are devoted to inventing medicines that allow patients to lead longer, happier, healthier and more productive lives. Investing over $20 billion annually in discovering and developing new medicines, PhRMA companies are leading the way in the search for cures.
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PhRMA Internet Address: http://www.phrma.org
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