There are serious concerns in the indus-try over how far behind Europe still is from the US. These concerns were uncovered during a confidential votingsession of key pharmaceutical industryplayers at the IBC Biomics meeting inStuttgart (Germany; 13–16 November2000). The group of almost 100 profes-sionals included a cross-section of mostof the industry sectors, including fromlarge pharmaceutical companies, largeand small biotechnology companies,venture capitalists, investors, manage-ment consultants, academics and serviceproviders. Delegates ranged from CEOsand Directors to junior managers andwere mostly from the UK, Germany andSwitzerland.

Europe versus the USIn the vote, 78% of delegates from largepharmaceutical companies felt thatEurope is significantly lagging behindthe US, 52% of the group saying Europeis 2–4 years behind. Contrary to popularbelief, John Ansell, Director of JohnAnsell Consultancy in the UK showeddata suggesting that Europe is actuallyfalling further behind the US. ‘The num-ber of actual deals being made byEuropean (and US) genomic companiesis increasing, but not at the same rate asthe US’, he explained.

To compound this problem, Ansellsaid that for the top 20 companies, dealsbetween US and European companiesactually decreased in number between1999 and 2000. He warned: ‘US compa-nies may decide that, although thingsare coming along in Europe, it is not areal trend and therefore may give updoing deals with European biotechnol-ogy companies altogether.’

Of the countries in Europe, votersthought that, other than Germany andthe UK, Scandinavia and Switzerland

have the greatest potential for growth ingenomics in the next 10 years, withIsrael showing surprisingly strong supportfrom the venture capitalists.

The publicThere was some surprise over the lack ofimpact of public opinion of the industryon future business plans, with 38% ofdelegates from pharmaceutical compa-nies, 56% from large biotechnologycompanies (defined as more than 7 yearsold and employing more than 40 peo-ple) and 40% from smaller biotechnol-ogy companies saying it would have noimpact at all. However, this view was notshared by those from academia, where75% said it did impact their plans.

PatentingThere was a split in the group overwhether current gene patenting laws forDNA sequences provide enough protec-tion for investment in genomic-baseddrug research, with delegates from phar-maceutical companies expressing dissat-isfaction and large biotechnology com-panies voting equally on both sides. JohnMorrison from AstraZeneca (AlderleyPark, Cheshire, UK) commented thatthey found the current patent situationquite stifling. A further large group(31%) would not commit to answeringthe question until some of the laws havebeen tested.

Discovery of new drugsA major concern of the majority of thedelegates (64%) was that there is ashortage of well-trained personnelwithin the genomics and proteomics industries, this being felt particularlystrongly by large biotechnology compa-nies (70%) and academia (83%).

There was also a spilt as to whetherpersonalizing treatment would mean the

end of blockbuster drugs, the bias forthose in large pharmaceutical companiesswinging firmly towards disagreement.However, during the panel discussion,John Ansell pointed out that many dis-eases are nothing to do with geneticsand these can therefore be treated usingblockbusters. Furthermore, Eric de laFortelle (Structural GenomiX, La Jolla,CA, USA) reminded the audience thatwe would not want to genotype anti-biotics too much as we need to avoid resistance developing even faster, andtherefore this is another area that willprobably produce blockbuster drugswhen new drugs are found.

The futureOf the whole group, 53% thought thatthe greatest bottleneck in genome-based R&D is target validation, withbioinformatics (19%), target identifi-cation (10%) and biological assays (8%)being much less important. Just over halfof the group (51%) thought that func-tional genomics/proteomics will havethe biggest impact on the discovery ofblockbuster drugs and that the mainusefulness of genomics and proteomicsis to speed up drug discovery (44%),closely followed by finding new products(34%). There is also much optimism thatthese techniques will be able to speedup drug development by at least 1–3years (53%), with 29% thinking it mayreduce the length of the process by evenlonger. The majority (61%) also thoughtthat in silico technologies would help re-duce drug discovery time significantly.

Few in the assembled group (11%,mostly investors) thought that geneticprofiling of patients would be commonplace within the next 3 years. In fact,most of the group thought that we willnot see this type of testing as routine foranother 5–7 years.

DDT Vol. 6, No. 1 January 2001 updatenews

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What the industry saysRebecca Lawrence, News & Features Editor