Global sales of anti-infective drugs reached $44.5 billion in 2005 and will likely double over the next 5 years. Antibiotics led the category at $31 billion. Infectious Diseases: R&D Challenges and Market Drivers, a CHI Insight Pharma report, analyzes the factors driving infectious disease therapeutic and diagnostic markets, the key business and technology trends, targets and drugs in development, companies at the forefront of anti-infective R&D, and the commercial opportunities and challenges of anti-infective drugs and vaccines.

Past hurdles to pursuing anti-infective drug development―including historically low margins, short therapeutic regimens, manufacturing challenges, and regulatory problems associated with developing drugs for “unvalidated” microbial targets―are no longer discouraging entrants. Big Pharma has rediscovered the anti-infectives market and is bolstering its pipelines through licensing agreements and acquisitions. And smaller, less risk-aversive biopharmaceutical companies have discovered the allure of substantial profits while also meeting public health goals. A quantitative survey (commissioned by CHI in July/August 2006, N=83) of individuals involved in infectious disease R&D and business development sheds light on the research priorities and R&D trends in industry, government, and academia.

The evolution of drug resistance is the most powerful driver of anti-infective R&D. Other factors fueling research that are assessed in the report include:

• The emergence of pandemics
• Perceived and actual threat of bioterrorism
• Advances in molecular biology and nanotechnology
• Accumulating evidence that many chronic diseases have an infectious etiology

Infectious Diseases: R&D Challenges and Market Drivers drills down into the emerging commercial opportunities, providing expert insight into:

• Recent developments and opportunities in the infectious disease testing market, which accounts for 80% of the estimated $6.5 billion global molecular diagnostics market
• The vaccines market, which has shed its low-margin image and posted 10-fold growth over the past decade driven by new threats, new technologies, and new targets
• Food safety and the food microbiology testing market
• The expanding market for veterinary drugs and diagnostics
• Niche opportunities in antimicrobial resistance
• Opportunities—and a practical guide to capitalizing on them—in Biodefense
• Neglected disease markets both large and small, including Malaria, TB, Onchocerciasis, Dengue, and more.

Individuals in R&D, business development, strategic planning, and marketing will benefit from the hundreds of hours of primary and secondary research that went into Infectious Diseases: R&D Challenges and Market Drivers.

About the Author

Leslie A. Pray, PhD, is a science writer and consultant to the Forum on Microbial Threats at the National Academy of Sciences. She has written extensively on a range of genetic, biotechnology, infectious disease, public health policy, and higher education issues for The Scientist, Genomics and Proteomics, The Chronicle of Higher Education, Orion, the American Chemical Society, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and the CBR Institute for Biomedical Research, among others. Dr. Pray received her PhD in population genetics from the University of Vermont and her BA degree from the University of California , Berkeley. An elected member of Sigma Xi, she has been the recipient of numerous scientific research awards, including an American Society of Naturalists Young Investigator Award and a National Science Foundation Environmental Biology Postdoctoral Fellowship. Dr. Pray can be reached at lpray@nasw.org .