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Medication Revolution: Tailor-made panaceas

July 2018
Marketing Material

The biotechnology sector plays a leading role in developing of new, personal medicines

Biotechnology is revolutionizing the pharmaceutical sector. For example, developments are growing toward the production of drugs for and by patients. This drug revolution brings investment opportunities. Read more about it here.

The American Judy Perkins was world news at the beginning of June. The leading the trade journal Nature Medicine published an article about the way in which she had been repaired of a fatal form of disseminated breast cancer1. During the diagnosis in 2013 she had to she was told that she only had a few months left to live. Completely unique is the case of Perkins not. Earlier two American women recovered from terminal forms of intestinal and hepatic cancer2.
 
In all cases, the recovery was due to a pioneering form of immunotherapy. Scientists remove a piece of tumour and bring the DNA of these is mapped out. Various tests will be carried out to determine which immune cells the ability of the patient to recognize the mutations caused by the cancer. Subsequently physicians grow these cells in a laboratory, up to billions of them. These become then injected with immune cells, so that, as it were, an army of building blocks are used to control the disease.
 

Blueprint for drug development

This form of immunotechnology is still in an experimental phase," says Marie-Laure Schaufelberger, product specialist of the Pictet-Biotech fund. A lot of others unfortunately, patients hardly react to this approach, if at all. It will take many more years. Before the first resources based on this technology are actually put on the market come. However, the ongoing research is providing a lot of new insights. Slowly but surely, a blueprint is emerging of how we can create different forms of to deal with cancer. The medicines of the future will be tailored to your needs made of and for our own immune system.
 
The development of immunotechnology is carried out by companies in the biotechnology. These companies are putting the extensive and ever-growing knowledge of human DNA in other areas as well. A good example of "personal medication" is finding remedies against genetic disorders. The human genome consists of approximately 20,000 genes. As biotechnology companies discover how they are able to adapt each of those genes, it will be possible to establish, on a case by case basis, a to develop appropriate medicinal products. According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), there are more than 10,000 diseases caused by a this is the case for a single gene 3.

Biotech: the medicine makers of the future 

The rise of personal medicines can lead to a major turnaround in the health care. Pharmaceutical companies are paying a great deal of attention to the development of blockbusters, Schaufelberger explains. These are means for large groups of patients against common conditions such as rheumatism, hearts and so on vascular diseases or diabetes. These medicines are sometimes used by millions of people uses and achieves an annual turnover of many billions of euros. 
Medication revolution: tailor-made panaceas
Pictet Asset Management
However, there have been for many years to observe signals indicating that the age of traditional pharmaceuticals is has had the longest time 4. The patents on large blockbusters expire, while there are always fewer new products in the pipeline. There have been no really new ones for years. Antibiotics came onto the market. More and more bacteria are also resistant. For existing medicinal products. Focusing new business models therefore, on biotechnology, the science that is much more focused on the multifactorial causes of diseases, the potential of which is far from exhausted 
exploratory study.

Investing in biotech

The prospect that biotechnology companies will be able to the ability to find new insights to combat a growing number of diseases, makes the sector into an attractive investment', says Schaufelberger. It is important, however, that not to treat all companies in the same way. The team of the Pictet-Biotech fund combines extensive investment experience with a medical background. That's what sets us up is in a position not only to understand companies financially, but also to understand the potential of the products in the pipeline. As a result, we are able to in such a way to choose position that we can take advantage of the advance of these makers of medicine of the future.