The Current Situation and Development Trends Abroad of Pharma Intermediates

Pharma intermediates are an important part of fine chemical industry, and their development level is the symbol of a country's chemical modernization level. Let's look at the development status and development trend of pharma intermediates in foreign countries.

The development status of pharma intermediates

For many years, pharma intermediates industry is the focus of investment and fierce competition in the world. In the past two decades, the world's pharma industry has made unprecedented progress, to the end of the 1990s, the world market size of drugs has reached about 256 billion U.S. dollars / a, pesticide sales of 23 billion U.S. dollars / a or so.

In terms of pharmas, the last decade, although biotechnology and genetic drugs as a newcomer in the development, important adult drugs are also being accepted. The future development trend of the world pharma industry for: high technology, high demand, high speed, high concentration.

The main characteristics of pharma intermediates are the following five aspects

New drugs are emerging and varieties are updated faster

Such as quinolonic acid antibacterial drugs, in the past 30 years, more than 20,000 compounds have been chemically synthesized and antibacterial screening.

Between 1962 and 1969, the research and development of successful: nalidixic acid (Nalidixic acid), oxalic acid (Oxalinic acid) and pyrrole acid (Piromidic acid) and so on.

Between 1970 and 1977, they were replaced by flumequine and pipemidic acid.

Since 1978, fluoroquinolones have emerged as the third generation of quinolones, such as ciprofloxacin (Ciprofloxacin), lomefloxacin (Lomefloxacin, Ny-198) and ofloxacin (Ofloxacin). They have a broad antibacterial spectrum, greater activity, and efficacy comparable to third- or fourth-generation cephalosporins.

The difficulty of creating new drugs is increasing

The management's requirements for the efficacy and safety of drugs are getting higher and higher, which makes the investment in research and development increase dramatically. 

At the same time, the research and development of new drugs is long-term and continuous; and there is a great risk. To adapt to compete in the high technology field, huge amounts of money are needed.

In economically developed countries, research and development costs as a percentage of turnover (C / A ≈ 6.3%, C / B ≈ 17.7%) more than the turnover margin (D / A ≈ 5.2%). A - total turnover, B - medical drug turnover, C - research and development costs, D - the total amount of profit.

Pharma intermediates pharma industry as a high-tech industry, the need for high knowledge content

Countries in the pharma industry enterprises are constantly strengthening the strength of its research team. Such as the United States pharma companies in the scientific research personnel accounted for 15% of the employees, which received a doctorate, master's degree accounted for 26.7% of the scientific research personnel.

The number of giant companies has increased

Pharma companies in developed countries through mergers and acquisitions, to grow their economic strength and development of research capacity to capture the market, and strive to enter the best size.

In France, for example, there were 1,960 pharma companies in 1950, 880 in 1970, 392 in 1980, reduced to 358 in 1989, such as the 10 months in 1990, the merger of Japanese pharma companies occurred in 36 cases, and only 10 in total in the 10 years from 1979 to 1989.

They all take the research, production (including  and formulations), sales trinity of business practices and scale production. They also look to the future, for promising bulk varieties of drugs, such as naproxen, piperazine acid (Piproxen), Ranitidine (Ranitidine), etc., before the expiration of its patent protection period, competing to find partners to develop new technical routes and new production processes to develop production, reduce costs, expand sales, in order to better participate in international competition.