Development Paths for Australian Biomedical Firms

The purpose of this paper is to examine possible development paths for Australia's indigenous biomedical industry. The Australian biomedical industry has a number of components. It includes some of the R&D and other activities of the major foreign owned pharmaceutical companies. It also includes some of the activities of Australian owned pharmaceutical companies. However, in terms of the number of companies, the largest component consists of substantially Australian owned companies undertaking drug discovery and development for human purposes and a further group of companies developing supporting technologies and other associated products and services. The focus of this paper is on the latter group of Australian drug development and technology companies although the section on alliances encompasses the broader range of activities of pharmaceutical companies in Australia. With one or two exceptions the companies comprising the Australian industry are at an early stage of development. The development prospects of the total industry reduce to the choices made by these young companies on how they obtain the necessary resources and how successfully these resources are applied to transform their early stage product pipelines into marketable drugs and other products