Market share of drugs produced by biotechnology has been steadily increasing, and is projected by one estimate to account for more than 25% of all prescription drug spending by the year 2010. Authors from the FDA evaluate the sales, complexity and patent expiry of therapeutic biologics available today.

They find that most products with sales exceeding US$250 million fall into one of the seven product classes: erythropoietins, granulocyte-colony stimulating factors (G-CSFs), insulin, interferon beta, human growth hormone (hGH, somatropin), interferon alpha and monoclonal antibodies. Out of these, 12 blockbuster protein products have sales greater than US$1 billion. These products comprise a considerable portion of the US$39.3 billion in total sales of all therapeutic proteins. Looking at the patent expiry and market issues, the authors try to figure out follow-on biologics for which of the above 7 classes makes economic sense. Read the full article here:

http://www.nature.com/nrd/journal/v7/n9/abs/nrd2636.html