Biologic drugs are a big deal for the pharmaceutical industry right now. Blockbuster chemicals for common conditions like diabetes and hypertension are largely things of the past. We’re getting pretty good at controlling those conditions, and few people expect a slew of major scientific breakthroughs that will lead to many more multibillion dollar treatments for these conditions. So the pharmaceutical industry has turned to what are known as “biologics” – treatments manufactured from cultures of living cells, rather than from chemistry labs like most pharmaceuticals in the past.
Biologics are typically more complicated and expensive to produce than traditional pharmaceutical interventions. For some healthcare conditions, the impact of biologics has been significant enough to warrant high prices. Here, in fact, are the top-selling biological products in the United States circa 2011…(To read the rest of the article and view comments, please visit Forbes.)
