Pharmaceutical Sales Jobs - Biotechnology Industry Snapshot

Like pharmaceutical companies, most biotechnology firms are in the human healthcare business. Some biotechs work in the agribusiness sector, working to create genetically enhanced food products, such as corn and rice. Others produce industrial fibers or chemicals, and some, like a significant segment of big pharma companies, are moving into the animal products sector. At present, however, most biotech firms produce or develop human therapeutics.

The biotechnology industry is a relatively young one, tracing its beginnings to a few California-based startups in the early 1980's. Two of those startups, Amgen and Genentech, are now among the industries largest, most profitable companies. The deciphering of the human genetic code by Celera Genomics Group and the Human Genome Project in the late 90's has created a limitless pool of therapeutic targets for biotech research.

In traditional pharmaceutical labs libraries of pre-existent drug compounds are tested against disease targets. Biotechnology seeks to design the therapeutic to fit the target. Moreover, biotech scientists are locating targets that occur earlier in the cascade of events that leads to disease, even to the point of trying to replace the defective genes that code for malfunction before those genes can begin to wreak havoc. Although individually tailored drugs lie at a considerable distance in the future, biotechnology clearly represents the medical approach that will deliver them eventually.

Another similarity between the biotechnology and pharmaceutical industries is the long and expensive regulatory approval process. Each biotech drug can cost their producers up to $300 million in research and testing, with the approval process lasting up to 10 years. This long and expensive process often yields unsatisfying results. Of thousands of products tested each year, only 10-15 new drugs are approved. Things may be looking up however; by the end of 2000, there were more than 300 biotech drugs in late-stage clinical trials.

Biotech's research success is not lost on the bigger pharmaceutical companies. Partnerships marrying the product research of the biotech company with the powerful sales and marketing machines of the pharmaceutical company are shaping the industry.

The same demographics that forecast pharmaceutical industry growth-an aging population and a host of new genomic drug targets-also drive biotech. Biotech companies offer a similar range of job categories, but in the biotech sector, job seekers can choose to pursue positions in tiny firms with just a few employees, or in the largest and best-known companies like Genentech or Amgen. Biotech offers a company size and a corporate atmosphere for just about everyone.

For those who are fired up about cutting-edge science, enjoy an intelligent, impassioned work environment, and can tolerate the uncertainty of working for a company which most likely is not yet profitable, biotechnology offers opportunities rivaled by few other industries.