BioCentury
ARTICLE | Strategy

Biologic rebirth

July 17, 2006 7:00 AM UTC

Compared to most of big pharma, the pharmaceutical company that is now Wyeth got a number of significant biotech assets relatively early on. But apart from driving some products already in development to market, it did little in the latter half of the 1990s and early 2000s to take advantage of those assets. Indeed, the core biologics group actually took a detour into small molecules in that period.

That all changed in 2003, as new management undertook several R&D initiatives, including revamping drug discovery and refocusing on the company's bio-logics assets. WYE now believes that it can put up to four large molecules into the clinic each year, and that biologics could grow from about 30% of sales today to 40-50% or more by 2012, especially if its Alzheimer's disease products are successful...