Nature of the Pharmaceutical and Medicine Manufacturing Industry About This Section

Nature of the Industry About this section

The pharmaceutical and medicine manufacturing industry develops and produces a variety of medicinal and other health-related products that save the lives of millions of people from various diseases and permits many people suffering from illness to recover to lead productive lives.

Goods and services. Thousands of medications are available today for diagnostic, preventive, and therapeutic uses. In addition to aiding in the treatment of infectious diseases such as pneumonia, tuberculosis, malaria, influenza, and sexually transmitted diseases, these medicines also help prevent and treat cardiovascular disease, asthma, diabetes, hepatitis, cystic fibrosis, and cancer. For example, anti-nausea drugs help cancer patients endure chemotherapy; clot-buster drugs help stroke patients avoid brain damage; and psychoactive drugs reduce the severity of mental illness for many people. Antibiotics and vaccines have dramatically reduced the occurrences of such diseases as diphtheria, syphilis, and whooping cough. Discoveries in veterinary drugs have controlled various diseases, some of which are transmissible to humans.

The U.S. pharmaceutical industry has achieved worldwide prominence through research and development (R&D) on new drugs, and spends a relatively high proportion of its revenue on R&D compared with other industries. Each year, pharmaceutical industry testing involves millions of compounds, yet may eventually yield fewer than 100 new prescription medicines.

For the majority of firms in this industry, the actual manufacture of drugs is the last stage in a lengthy process that begins with scientific research to discover new products and to improve or modify existing ones. The R&D departments in pharmaceutical and medicine manufacturing firms start this process by seeking and rapidly testing libraries of thousands to millions of new chemical compounds with the