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Biological therapy
Biological drugs represent medical drugs produced by biotechnology that include biological macromolecules such as nucleic acids, proteins or microorganisms. Since the biosynthetic human insulin made via recombinant DNA technology in 1982 as the first substance approved for therapeutic use, there are currently more than 160 registered biological drugs approved for therapy. Due to their high specificity and efficiency, biological drugs are rapidly becoming a standard therapy for a vast array of diseases. Protein based products are expected to be 4 out of 5 top-selling drugs on the global market by the end of 2013. The estimated global market value for biologicals is 90 billion dollars, which represents 13,8 % of all pharmaceutics. Biological drugs can be used in almost any field of medicine but are mainly restricted to several diseases, such as cancer, autoimmune diseases, infectious diseases, AIDS/HIV, diabetes and cardiovascular diseases.
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Figure 1. Top 10 classes of pharmaceuticals in clinical use (source of data: IMS Health). |
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