People often associate the pharmacy industry as the place where they go to get a prescription for drugs filled. The pharmaceutical industry is much more than this. This is an industry that discovers, develops, produces, and markets pharmaceutical drugs.
These drugs are provided to patients and customers, with the goal of curing them, providing vaccinations, and also helping to relieve their symptoms. Even at a local pharmacy, the duties of the people that work there include a host of tasks including dispensing prescriptions, conducting health and wellness testing, and helping to manage chronic diseases.
Outside of your neighborhood pharmacy, the pharmaceutical industry includes a variety of other positions. These include biotechnology senior research scientists, research scientists, pharmaceutical field sales representatives, clinical research physicians, clinical research associates, and pharmaceutical financial analysts. The field is constantly growing, especially with support from many pharmaceutical investments. Today, approximately 800,000 people work in the biopharmaceutical field alone. The biotech industry and pharmacy industry indirectly employs more than 4.7 million people in the United States, and in 2019 alone, the pharmaceutical industry brought in approximately $1.3 trillion. In an arena that’s constantly growing, it helps to keep up with the latest trends. Below are some of the exciting innovations that will be taking place in the pharmaceutical industry in 2021.
Use of Pichia Pastoris Expression
One innovation that those in the pharmaceutical industry should keep on the lookout for is Pichia pastoris expression (p.pastoris). This form of protein expression involves a species of methylotrophic yeast. Pichia pastoris has a strong potential for being an expression system for protein production. Further, this organism has become a model for genetic study, while also becoming important for biological research and biotech applications. This is especially true for heterologous protein production.
Pichia pastoris/(P.pastoris) p. pastoris expression system has also led to it being classified as GRAS status meaning that it is “generally recognized as safe” by the United States FDA (Food and Drug Administration). With this GRAS status granted by the FDA, the protein products made by Pichia have been applied to food and biopharmaceutical products. Some of these biopharmaceutical products which use Pichia include Kalbitor, Insugen, Medway, Recombinant trypsin, Shanvac, Shaneferon, Nanobody-ALX-0061, and AQUAVAC IPN. The FDA approval, being primary, and other reasons listed are representative of why Pichia pastoris /protein expression is an innovation that you should look out for in 2021.
More Acceptance of Medical Marijuana
Though not one of the many innovations in biotechnology, such as biotechnology advancements in the medical, agricultural, and industrial areas, the use of medical marijuana is becoming even more accepted in current times. Medical marijuana, or medical cannabis, is cannabis and cannabinoids which are prescribed by physicians. The acceptance of such prescription use will be an innovation that will take place in 2021, and it will be a success story for the industry as a whole.
The perception of this drug has changed amongst physicians in the United States and throughout the world in recent years. Some physicians still feel reluctant to prescribe medical marijuana for a host of medical ailments. Other physicians see the benefits of the drug and are beginning to prescribe it. The drug has been known to help with tackling insomnia, depression, anxiety, PTSD, multiple sclerosis, and cancer pain. The drug is also known to have varying to mixed results with treating migraines, fibromyalgia, symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease and dementia, Parkinson’s disease, Crohn’s disease, and glaucoma. Pharmaceutical companies now realize that as the drug is further accepted by medical professionals, it provides a great standard of care for their patients.
More Digitized/Virtual Processes
In recent years, the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industry, run by such corporate leaders as Vivek Ramaswamy, has become even more digitized. Gone are the days of keeping paper records for everything or giving hard copies for medicine prescriptions. Now, most of the documents and information about the pharmaceutical industry, is digitized and found in electronic batch records. Biotech industry companies all across the world, in places like New York and San Francisco, can utilize such methods to help their companies.
As mentioned, there are many paper processes that have become digitized to help enhance operational efficiency. For example, let’s say that a pharmaceutical company in previous years kept all of their research information in a physical filing system on hard copy documents. That’s not the case now in many instances, as much of this research information has been digitized, to allow for easy access by every pharmaceutical employee. This new protocol with digitizing processes and records helps the industry overall.
The other part of this industry that will see further innovation will be the virtual processes. Since many companies were forced to shut down due to COVID-19 (coronavirus) restrictions, they had to use virtual meeting platforms like Zoom to keep their daily operations going. As long as these companies have good internet service providers to allow for such meetings to take place, then having a virtual office is a great option.
Considering the importance of the pharmaceutical industry to medicine as a whole, especially now that coronavirus vaccines are being distributed, having a virtual space like this will be crucial. Virtual and digitized processes are smaller inklings of the technological advancements found to be used by pharmaceutical industry leaders like Yale Law school graduate and biotechnology business owner, Vivek Ramaswamy. Some of these innovations include the use of IP address blocks, IoT integration, 3D-Printing Drugs, and artificial intelligence.
IP address blocks are an impressive technological advancement. Tech companies like IPv4 Connect provide clean reputation IPv4 address blocks, which prevent companies from being suspected of being on an IP reputation blacklist. Unfortunately, if you don’t know about the integrity of your IPv4 address blocks, this can cause massive costs for your pharmaceutical or biotech company in the long run. This, and many other technological advancements, can help the pharmaceutical industry to thrive in 2021.
Utilizing Smaller Production Options
One innovation that’s being utilized by a host of pharmaceutical companies and organizations in the biotech industry is minimizing their production options. For “precision medicine” the use of smaller facilities is required. Precision medicine is a structural method within medicine that involves the customization of healthcare with medical decisions, treatments, practices, or products being tailored to a subgroup of patients. This stands opposed to the “one‐drug‐fits‐all” model.
Utilizing this method creates an increased number of smaller facilities in the pharmaceutical and biotech industry. These are created due to the need to make a smaller number of medications, which are of higher quality. This stands counterbalance to creating a higher number of medications, which are of lesser quality. The goal of utilizing such smaller production locations in the biotech industry is to provide the most quality products available. For many companies, this is the first time that this mindset of “smaller is better’ is being used, so there will possibly be a learning curve.
With a smaller number of medications being created, this might create a smaller pool of customers to receive these medicines. Another possible issue that might arise with utilizing this method will be needing to make sure that your company receives maximum profits through fast production, while also meeting the demands of your customers. In the long run, though, it makes sense to go smaller because, at the end of the day, your quality product will be what speaks best for you if you take this first step in 2021.
Article edited and fact checked by our editorial team.