Spotlight On Drug-Device Combination Therapies At BIOTECHNICA 2007

The combination of a pharmacological substance and a medical
product - which itself has no effect on biochemical processes inside
the human body - is one of the hot topics in the biotech industry
today.

The global market for the combination preparations known as
"stents" is currently growing by an average of around 11 per cent a
year, as a study by the American analysts at BCC Research has shown.
According to their calculations, the tiny tubular implants that are
used to support the walls of blood vessels will be generating sales
worth eight billion US dollars by the year 2010. "This makes
drug-device combinations an extraordinarily lucrative market, in which
the need for collaboration between commercial companies is very great,
and at the same time especially difficult", explains Stephan Ph.
Kuhne, who sits on the Board of Management at Deutsche Messe Hannover.
"We know that companies operating in these areas have little contact
with each other in the normal course of events - so it can be very
difficult to find the right partners." And this is where the
BIOTECHNICA PARTNERING event comes in - specifically designed to bring
together commercial enterprises and research scientists to collaborate
on the development of drug-device combinations.

Drug-eluting stents: the star performers in the drug-device world

In the past the main market focus has been on so-called
"drug-eluting stents" for coronary heart diseases. Since 2002 surgeons
have been using these drug-coated stents to combat hardening of the
coronary arteries - popularly dubbed "managers' disease" - which
ultimately leads to heart attacks. Although they are notably more
expensive that the uncoated implants, patients are asking for them.
However, the applications of drug-eluting stents are not confined to
the coronary blood vessels. They can also be used in large vessels in
the digestive tract or in the peripheral leg arteries.

Although coated stents have been on the market for a comparatively
long time, there is still a long way to go in terms of their
development. Hitherto the principal coatings available for use in the
coronary arteries have been the chemotherapy drug Paclitaxel and the
immunosuppressant drug Sirolimus, which help to prevent blockages of
the blood vessels. The search is now on for new, more effective
medications, optimized dosages - and even brand new ways of combining
therapeutic substances with the tiny lattice tubes. At present, not
even the standard preparations that would allow the use of coated
stents in other vessels are available.

Five target areas for the use of drug-device combinations

Although very large sums of money are being invested in the
development of drug-eluting stents, researchers are looking at other
promising ways of combining medical products with new pharmacological
substances. Apart from stents, we can identify four other areas where
great strides are being made. Catheters coated with antibiotics have
been used to prevent infections of the urinary tract, while bone
cement containing antibiotics reduces the risk of infection,
particularly in the case of hip implants. Also falling into this
category are biological products for treating wounds and transdermal
plasters - typically used to transport hormones into the body through
the skin. And photodynamic tumour therapy or PDT is a cancer treatment
designed to kill off tumour cells by the targeted use of light. BCC
Research estimates that the market for these four areas of application
will be worth 3.5 billion US dollars by 2010. With the exception of
the orthopaedic applications, all forms of combination therapy are now
seeing double-digit growth.

So far the market for drug-device combination therapies has been
dominated by the Americans, not least because coated stents for use in
coronary vessels have been taken up with enthusiasm by the US health
service and by patients in the USA, so that the market has grown much
faster than it has in Europe. But driven by new strategic
partnerships, of the very kind that BIOTECHNICA is designed to
promote, sales of combination therapies in Europe are set to receive a
significant boost.

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