Pharmaceutical industry: cost structure

Hyphenated analytical techniques such as LC-MS, which combines liquid chromatography and mass spectrometry, are well-developed laboratory tools that are widely used in the pharmaceutical industry. Eor some compounds, mass spectrometry alone is insufficient for complete structural elucidation of unknown compounds nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy (NMR) can help elucidate the structure of these compounds (see Chapter 20). Traditionally, NMR experiments are performed on more or less pure samples, in which the signals of a single component dominate. Therefore, the structural analysis of individual components of complex mixtures is normally time-consuming and less cost-effective. The... 

The purpose of this chapter has been to provide a broad, general overview of the role of the pharmaceutical industry in the economy and in the health sector, and to explore a number of problems arising from the industry s cost structure and from the traditional imbalance in the global markets for pharmaceutical products. 

The importance of polymorphism in pharmaceuticals cannot be overemphasized. Some crystal structures contain molecules of water or solvents, known as hydrates or solvates, respectively, and they are also called as pseudopolymorphs. Identifying all relevant polymorphs and solvates at an early stage of development for new chemical entities has become a well-accepted concept in pharmaceutical industry. For poorly soluble compounds, understanding their polymorphic behavior is even more important since solubility, crystal shape, dissolution rate, and bioavailability may vary with the polymorphic form. Conversion of a drug substance to a more thermodynamically stable form in the formulation can signiLcantly increase the development cost or even result in product failure. 

In recent years there has been a renewed and growing interest in MCRs because they offer several attractive features to the chemical and pharmaceutical industries, including access to a large number of novel and diverse structures and lower production and environmental costs due to high convergence and a greater degree of... 

Cold sterilization of beer using microfiltration was introduced on a commercial scale in 1963. The process was not generally accepted at that time, but has recently become more common. Sterilization of beer and wine is much less stringent than pharmaceutical sterilization. The main objective is to remove yeast cells, which are quite large, so the product is clear and bright. Bacterial removal is also desirable a 106 reduction in bacteria is equivalent to the best depth filters. The industry has found that 1-p.m filters can remove essentially all the yeast as well as provide a 106 reduction in the common bacteria found in beer and wine. Because the cost structure of beer and wine production is very different from that... 

Few companies are as dependent upon research as those in the pharmaceutical industry. The development of a new drug is enormously costly, so companies invest heavily in computational approaches to drug design, with the aim of reducing the number of chemicals that need to be screened for therapeutic activity, and thereby shortening the time to market for new drugs. Typically, pharmaceutical companies use structure-based design to address computational questions such as... 

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