AusBiotech 2004: Don't hide within Australia's borders, Burrill warns Australian biotechs

The drug-discovery industry -- pharma and biotech alike -- will suffer a sea-change as the age of personalised medicine begins, said Steve Burrill at Monday's opening of the 2004 AusBiotech conference in Brisbane.

Burrill, one of the biotechnology industry's founding fathers and CEO of San Francisco merchant bank Burrill & Company, said Australian biotechs needed to be more aggressive in partnering and couldn't afford to "hide within your borders".

Soon, drugs will be used not only to treat disease, but also to enhance wellness, said Burrill -- and it is in these areas that personalised medicine would come into its own.

He noted that this trend was already beginning, with drugs for chronic insomnia, baldness and impotence amongst the top in product sales. "Ageing is probably the biggest market we have," he said.

Targeted patient trials in which genetic diagnostics are used to identify the subset of patients most likely to benefit from a new therapy will bridge the current disconnect between regulators and the industry, he said. Regulators are charged with keeping unsafe products off the market, whereas the industry aims to produce and market safe therapies.

He predicted the rise of conditional approval of Phase III trials from regulators, in which pharmacogenomic data is used to monitor clinical trials as they progress.

Already, clinicians are using genome sequencing to determine the risk profiles of individual patients, and to draw correlations between genetics and disease.

This will be driven by demand from insurance companies and government reimbursement agencies - the ultimate "buyers" of the products.

"What we've learned in the last few years is that the drug industry of blockbusters doesn't work," said Burrill.

"The pharmaceutical industry of today is a dinosaur. The pharma company of tomorrow is a global distribution company. Big pharma doesn't stimulate much innovation.

"We in the innovation industry have the hot hand."

And he was bullish as always about returns to come from the biotechnology industry - estimating that 90 per cent of capital already invested in the sector has yielded 10 per cent of possible returns - and that the next 10 per cent of capital to go in will reap 90 per cent of returns.