Features in 2003

Bigger than monoclonal antibodies? More powerful than antisense? Biotech investors say...maybe.

Changes in economic institutions and the entrepreneurial climate, together with a growth in venture capital funds, have greatly increased European biotechnology venture formation in recent years.

The current commercial path for nanotechnology ventures mirrors the early evolution of the biotechnology industry, allowing similar strategies toward both technology commercialization and investment opportunities.

Nanotechnology has solid commercial prospects, but the process of converting basic discoveries into marketable products will be long and hard.

The US EPA's analysis of Bt crops finds that they pose no significant risk to the environment or to human health.

New findings indicate that there may be benefits from more collaborative models of intellectual property management in the public sector.

Most life science investors have historically shied away from supporting agbiotechnology, but changing consumer acceptance and refinements in infrastructure, intellectual property management and regulations may make the sector more attractive in the coming years.

Despite a poor return on investment thus far, innovations in high-throughput screening are still very much in demand.

Since 2000, over a quarter of all new drugs approved have been biopharmaceuticals.

As the first products based on pharmacogenomics emerge, economic and regulatory considerations will affect—and be affected by—drug approval, licensing and delivery long before medicines are prescribed by a physician.

Nature Biotechnology's annual survey of public biotechnology companies shows that the ranks are thinning and profits are shrinking.

An analysis of deal structures in biotechnology from the past 25 years reveals that universities often neglect important economic aspects in their licensing agreements.

A survey of US venture capital funds investing in biotechnology shows that the poor economy did not deter VC investment in biotechnology in 2002, but it is unclear what looms ahead.

Regulatory agencies are being pulled in several directions at once, and drug developers must learn to adapt swiftly to a rapidly changing landscape.

Because life scientists are now using the Web not only for information gathering, but also for e-commerce, bio-portals business plans are looking more tenable.

New insight into the biology of biofilms is spawning novel commercial strategies for treating the intractable infections they cause.

Incentives and strategies of key players in the global food industry may be driving public acceptance of agrobiotechnology as much as consumer attitudes.

Robust, reproducible ways to identify and quantify the protein complement of cells are still some way off, as are the means of turning these technologies into viable businesses.

A survey of the scientific and patent literature on single-nucleotide variants reveals the dominance of research centers in the United States and the prolific patenting of SNP technology by a select group of biotechnology companies.