Biologics have replaced small molecules as the dominant focus of big pharma's pipeline, and a new analysis from the Tufts Center for the Study of Drug Development (Boston) has quantified the phenomenon. In 2012, about 40% of all biotech products in clinical development were being developed by big pharma, up from 15.2 % in 2000, according to Ron Evens, an adjunct professor at the University of the Pacific in Stockton, California, who conducted the study with Boston-based Tufts. And in an even more startling metric, biotech products accounted for only 7% of revenue generated by the top ten treatments worldwide in 2001, but made up 71% of that revenue in 2012. Over a similar period, biotech product sales more than quadrupled, financing of biotech research increased tenfold, and the amount invested in pharma-biotech research alliances increased sixfold. In fact, all parameters in the Tufts report point in the same direction: pharma has dramatically shifted its R&D strategy from an almost singular focus on small-molecule drugs in the early 1990s to a dominant focus on biotech products today. Driving the transformation are biotech products' novel mechanisms of action and ability to command high prices, combined with the declining patent lives of small-molecule drugs, the report said. Biotechnology Industry Organization spokesperson Tracy Cooley says her organization agrees that the growth of biotech has been driven in part by those factors, though the shift “can be largely attributed to a natural evolution of the industry.”