Biopharma Innovators — The Challenges And Opportunities

By Ahmed Bouzidi

While the COVID-19 pandemic may not fundamentally alter existing market trends, it will undoubtedly magnify and accelerate them — whether regarding remote working, e-commerce and process digitalization, or the rise of the biopharmaceutical industry.

At first a frightening nightmare, with the rapid spread of the virus globally accompanied by significant morbidity and mortality, the COVID pandemic quickly inspired great hope through the unprecedented mobilization of healthcare systems, including the regulatory authorities. From initial identification of the virus, it took only a matter of weeks for the sequencing and the expression of the SARS-Cov-2 spike gene and just 10 months to develop the first vaccines – and today, barely a year since the first COVID-19 case was reported in China (as of April 2021), over 560 million doses have been administered in 152 countries and territories. And now several vaccines have been developed at record speed, thanks to years of research into related viruses, technology platforms, and billions of dollars in investment.