How new technologies are creating new markets

Sarah Rickwood looks at why the next frontier for pharmaceutical innovation may not be a pharmaceutical at all, and how this will affect launch

The prescription medicines industry has always been driven by innovation, and that innovation has, until very recently, focused almost exclusively on the molecules of one of two basic types – small or biologic. This is changing rapidly, as Graphic 1 shows. The future of innovative prescription launch will now include therapies made from genetic material, a patient’s own cells (or someone else’s) or even more beyond molecular innovation entirely, for example moving into the digital realm. As this happens, it will not be business as usual for launch.

Launch of the first advanced therapy medicinal products: cell and gene therapies

From 2010, with Provenge (sipuleucel-T), pharmacotherapies involving modified cells launched commercially. Subsequent launches of Kymriah, (tisagenleleucel) for acute lymphoblastic leukaemia and diffuse large B-cell lymphoma, and Yescarta (axicabtagene ciloleucel), also for large B-cell lymphoma from 2017 onwards have proven successful and laid the foundations for a sustainable commercially successful sector in cell therapies.

• Read the full article in pharmaphorum's Deep Dive digital magazine