Research & Development of the european pharmaceutical industry

The health of their population has always been a great concern for governments of Post-War Europe. In order to achieve their goals they had to work closely together with the pharmaceutical Industry. With the phenomenon of the aging population the importance of development of new drugs is increasing. The increasingly old population of Europe creates a big market for pharmaceutical companies. The pharmaceutical Industry is a very complex sector with close links to other Industries. The chemical Industry for example is an important supplier for materials needed in the process of creating new drugs. Furthermore is the market for pharmaceuticals characterized by extremely little concentration and a huge variety of products. Globally in 1998, the 300 best-selling products held a share of less than 45% of the worlds market. The top two products held 1.3% of the market each.1 This fact creates a necessity for the companies to research new, so called 'Blockbuster drugs' to succeed on this market with a high competition. The data on the various methods of drug discovery is enormous and sophisticated. In this paper the structure of the Research & Development sector of the European pharmaceutical industry will be examined, which is of increasing importance for the success of the individual companies. The specific data on the R & D section will be given a general character. Furthermore it will give a brief overview of the different regions in Europe and their individual differences. In the end, the difficulties and challenges of R & D in the pharmaceutical industry will be described and compared to other pharma markets abroad. [1 Data taken from 'Combining discovery with development' by Dr. Peter Eddershaw; World pharmaceutical frontiers 2003/2004 ]