Biotechnology is continuously advancing and the future may lie in personalized medicine. The biotech sector, along with related exchange traded funds (ETFs), may see billions in revenue as this market grows in the coming years.
Biotech companies, investors, providers and big pharmaceutical giants are bullish on personalized medicine and have readily entered the field, writes Rebecca Vesely for Modern Healthcare. “Personalized medicine is a way of tailoring medicine to groups of patients and individual patients,” commented Paul Billings, director and chief scientific officer at the new Genomic Medicine Institute. “The return on investment is fewer adverse events, better treatments, shorter hospital visits and better outcomes,” he further adds. [Biotechs: More Acquisitions and Specialized Drugs.]
The U.S. personalized medicine market is calculated to be worth around $232 billion today, and it is expected to grow 11% annually to more than $450 billion by 2015. Enticed by high returns on relatively lower costs, big pharmas are also beginning to shift their focus to this market, away from blockbuster drugs.
According to the recently released MoneyTree report based on data from Thomson Reuters, biotech investments only dropped 19% in 2009, but the sector was still the largest investment sector for the year with $3.5 billion going into 406 deals, writes Marie Daghlian for Seeking Alpha.