Prophecy & Prognostication 2.0 — A Charting Of Biopharma's Future

By Rob Wright, Chief Editor, Life Science Leader
Follow Me On Twitter @RfwrightLSL

A 2018 article in Inc. magazine listed eight industries that would “really boom in 2018.” Among them was biotechnology as, “It has the potential to solve a wide variety of problems in fields like medicine, agriculture, and industry, and as technology improves, biotech’s potential just keeps growing.” So how did the biopharmaceutical — a term I’m using since biotech and pharma have become pretty blended — industry do? According to the FDA website, there have been 45 novel drug approvals for 2018. And considering there is still more than two months remaining (as of this writing), it looks like we should easily surpass the number of novel drugs approved in 2017 (46). Not bad. But a review of performance via Fidelity’s sectors and industries overview paints a rather different picture. Within Fidelity’s healthcare sector are listed six industries. The three most applicable to our readers include biotechnology, life sciences tools & services, and pharmaceuticals. Here is their performance as of Oct. 16, 2018.