Pfizer & Adamas

John Griffin

Pfizer & Adamas

        The pharmaceutical and biotech industry is one of the fastest growing and most exciting industry clusters in the world today. It is an industry that, first and foremost, offers great hope in finding cures for diseases. But it also provides the tools or devices that those in multiple fields can use to address societal needs for new products and services.

        Pfizer and Adamas are two firms within this industry that share some of the same challenges yet take different strategic approaches to their own individual success.

        First, let’s define these two companies Pfizer who acts as both a biotechnical and pharmaceutical company is the largest in the industry. Pfizer was founded in 1849 and develops and produces medicines and vaccines for a wide range of medical disciplines, including immunology, oncology, cardiology, diabetology/endocrinology, and neurology.

        Adamas, founded in 2002 is strictly a biotherapeutic company within the biotech industry. Instead of spending absorbent R&D costs upfront to manufacture and sell a drug, they take a different approach. They synthesize and recreate therapeutic agents that are produced from living organisms and include monoclonal antibodies, antibody fragments, peptides, replacement factors, fusion proteins, oligonucleotides and DNA preparations for gene therapy, as well as vaccines. This process is now called pharmacokinetics. It refers to the biological processes determining absorption, distribution, metabolism and excretion of a drug in an organism. Significant progress has been made in understanding pharmacokinetics as well as toxicity profiles of biotherapeutics in animals and humans. Their business strategy is twofold.  They intend to develop and commercialize their wholly-owned products directly.  In addition, they intend to form partnerships with companies that have an already established market presence.  This is a rapidly growing industry for a broad spectrum of indications, ranging from oncology and autoimmunity to orphan and genetic diseases.

        Although these two firms are different, they share similar opportunities and strengths in the biotechnology industry. Biotechnology products and services have unlimited economic growth potential in any format. Historically speaking, there is no limit to new ideas with the amount of R&D capital this industry can raise. Biotechnology is the ultimate knowledge-driven industry: its key success factors are an active research community combined with a highly skilled, educated workforce.

        The convergence of technology is a tremendous opportunity with Pfizer and Adamas. With Pfizer’s acquisition approach to gain market share and tax reductions, they are able to foster new information previously held technological advancement by competitor companies. The convergence of technology is certainly and opportunity and strength for Adamas. As the process of pharmacokinetics continues to grow, more partnerships will be created with drugs that have already been approved by the FDA thereby reducing the barrier for entry that will be the catalyst for research grants and stimulate economic growth.