BIO 2004: Best is yet to come, industry heavyweights predict

Four industry visionaries provided a glimpse of the biotechnology industry's future at the final plenary session of BIO 2004, which wrapped up in San Francisco last week.

"Even though the industry is 25 years old, the best years are ahead," said Invitrogen CEO Gregory Lucier.

Among the waves of the future discussed by the panellists -- who also included Genentech chief medical officer and executive vice-president Susan Desmond-Hellman, Affymetrix founder and CEO Steve Fodor, and Carol Kovac, general manager of life science solutions at IBM -- were personalised and predictive medicine, 'theranostics' and systems biology.

Fodor said the industry was moving from the data-gathering phase that followed the human genome project, to application of the data. "We need to turn data into real knowledge, and collect data in context," he said. "We're beginning to enter the phase of application to real systems."

The study of systems biology is gaining momentum, as researchers start to understand the interconnectedness of biological processes. "It's really hard to argue with systems biology... but science has a reductionist approach," said Fodor. "We have to understand as much as we can in the context of what we're trying to achieve."

"A human being is not an engineering problem and never will be," said Desmond-Hellman. "The whole patient is going to tell you more than any one piece of data."

Desmond-Hellman said much progress had been made in the last five years in the way that disease was viewed, but she predicted that in 10 years, people would look back and regard even today's views as primitive. "It's not unreasonable to think that in the next decade we're moving to a world where... [for example] the oncologist selects treatments based on the molecular signature of the tumour," she said. "It's already happening -- it's the here and now."

But the move to personalised medicine was antithetical to 'blockbusterology', the panellists said, and would have profound implications for the biopharmaceutical industry -- for example, costs of drug development would have to be substantially reduced to make niche products worthwhile.

Kovac said the shift from blockbuster drugs to niche products was akin to the evolution of computers from mainframes to PCs. The response to the challenge to the existing model was a tendency to put one's head in the sand, she said.

"But when there is a model shift, there is a tremendous amount of room for people to look for new value creation," Kovac said. "There will still be blockbuster drugs, it just won't be the main focus."

In the end, it was moderator and fellow visionary Steve Burrill who had the last word about the way of the future for the biotech industry.

"We're moving from a sickness-oriented world to a wellness-oriented world," he said.