Nov 23 2011
The healthcare market is poised to see some of the earliest benefits of nanotechnology. Over the next decade, it will be one of nanotech's highest growth sectors. Targeted drug delivery therapies for the treatment of cancer is one the most commonly cited healthcare benefits on nanotechnologies.
A new study by Macmillan Cancer Support shows a dramatic increase in the median cancer survival times over the past 40 years. Coupling nanotechnology drug delivery (NDD) methods with improvements in diagnostics, we can expect that much more progress will be made in the next 10 years than in the previous 40.
Although nanotechnology is revolutionizing the diagnosis and treatment of a number of cancers, it is only six years since the first nanoparticulate drug delivery product for the treatment of breast cancer, Abraxane, was launched by Abraxis Oncology, a division of American Pharmaceutical Partners, Inc. The initial announcement saw the company's share prices rise by 50% and required the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to create a new class of therapeutic products.
But this was only the opening shot in the war against cancer, and there are now hundreds of new nanotech based treatments under development ranging from reformulation of existing drugs to enhance their effectiveness to radical new "magic bullet" therapies.
Cientifica's study, Nanotechnology in Drug Delivery 2011-2021, gives a comprehensive analysis and geographical breakdown of the current nanotechnology drug delivery market and its most relevant technologies and also provides a forecast for the size of total addressable markets and percent share of those key technologies to 2021.
Companies mentioned in the report include:
Accelrys, Amgen, Inc., Angiotech Pharmaceuticals, Inc., Celgene Corporation, Cephalon, Inc., Cerulean Pharma, Inc., Cytokine PharmaSciences, Inc., Debiotech SA, Elan Corporation, plc, Enzon Pharmaceuticals, Inc., F. Hoffmann-La Roche Ltd, Flexible Medical Systems, Genencor, Gilead, GlaxoSmithKline, IOTA NanoSolutions Ltd., Izon Science Ltd, Kiadis Pharma, Kuecept Ltd, Lena Nanoceutics Ltd, Life Technologies, Lypro Biosciences, Makefield Therapeutics, Inc., Medical Nanotechnologies, Inc., Merck & Co., Inc., Merck Serono, Merck Sharp & Dohme Corp., Nanobiotix, NanoCarrier Co. Ltd., Nemucore Medical Innovations, nLife Therapeutics, S.L., Novartis Institutes for Biomedical Research (NIBR), Novartis Pharmaceuticals, NUCRYST Pharmaceuticals Corp., PAR Pharmaceutical, Inc., Particle Sciences, Inc., Pfizer, PharmaNova Inc, Pharmidex, Sigma-Tau Pharmaceuticals, Inc., SoluBest Ltd., Spectrum Pharmaceuticals, Inc., The Dow Chemical Company ("Dow"), VYOME Biosciences