Pharmacy
Pharmacy Industry in India is a Rs 25,000 crore industry. The no:1 Drug
manufacturer is Ranbaxy which has a turnover of $ 1.7 billion. Other heavy
weights in the industry are Cipla, Glaxo Smithkline Beecham, Dr. Reddy's
Laborataries etc. Recently the TATA group has invested more than $ 30 million
for taking majority stake in a company called Advinus Therapeutics. Pharmacy
does not focus on drugs for human beings. Drugs focussing on animals, for the
applications of agro industry etc would fall under the purview of this
industry. Rememebr the avian influenza. when the world got hit by the H5N1
virus, one caompany had the answer. Pfizer. It had oseltamivir. The brand name
would be more famous - TAMIFLU. There is still lot of debate going on
the ethics of allowing a company to benefit at the expense of human lives
bringing to light the the ethical side of patents.
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Basically pharmaceutical companies
manufacture medicinces or drugs. The operations of a pharmaceutical company may
be broadly classified into two - Generics or Research and Develpoment focussed
Own Drugs. Generics means those drugs that were originally discovered by a
particular company but the when the patent period dies, the other comapnmies
take it up and introduce the same drug by manufacturting through a different
processs. For example - Crocin is a world-famous antipyretic and analgesic.
This means that it lowers the body temperature and reduces the pain. But Crocin
is a brand owned by Glaxo SmithyKline Beecham. It is actually a compopnd called
paracetamol and the chemcial content is actually acetyl salycylic acid. Many
other companies also manufacture paracetamol under different brand names. These
lesser know brands of paracetamol could be the closest example to "generics".
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But the world needs other newer drugs for newer applications. Consider this -
if a company were to announce a drug that would cure AIDS, it is rest
assured that it would rake in billions of dollars in revenue for the
manufacturer. This drug obviously would be the reuslt of exstensive research
conducted in the laborataries.
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This would be an example of a R&D
breakthrough. thye payoff of an R&D breakthroughy would be much
ebtter than the payoff in generics. But as per industry estimates it takes
between 5 to 7 years of heavily funded research to lauch a new drug. We need to
keep in mind that all diseases were life threatenng before man conquered it
with the appropriate medicine. Smallpox was deadly. It was conquered. Malaria
is deadly. The antidote is now available. All this is the application of
pharmacy. Many pharmaceutical companies have clear focus areas of work - like
drugs for drugs for inflammation and metabolic diseases etc. Another example is
the $ 22 billion company called Merck that has identified targets in genes,
protiens, enzymes etc linked to diseases.
Studies and the subsequent careers in pharmacy couold be skewed towards R&D.
Students getting into this line should have an aptitude for spending hours in
the laboratory conducting experiments. Traits required would be attention to
detail, patience, ability to concentrate on minor details for extended periods
of tine, ability to woirk as part of a higly talented pool of scietists etc.
Options for higher studies exist in Organic Chemistry, Medicinal Chemistry,
Pharmacology, Pharmacockinetics etc.
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