Eighty per cent of the world's medicine is consumed by people living in just 15 countries. With the exception of Japan, the second biggest drugs market and traditionally a lucrative hunting ground for pharmaceutical companies, the drugs industry has focused almost exclusively on the US and Europe. But if there is a new frontier for pharmaceuticals, that frontier is almost certainly Asia...more

OUTSOURCING
Contractors uncover jewels
Pharmaceuticals companies have had it so good for so long that paring costs has never been a high priority. While other industries, from oil giants to carmakers, have aggressively sought to contract out their non-core activities, drugs companies have been jacks-of-all-trades. From basic research to manufacturing and marketing, they have done everything themselves...more

CANCER
A crusade to top the wish list
Cancer is the most favoured area for pharmaceutical research and development. Although no precise figures are available, industry sources suggest that pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies worldwide spend between $3bn and $4bn a year on cancer R&D (and governments and charities spend a similar amount, led by the US National Cancer Institute)...more

JAPAN
Introversion and inertia
Japan's drugs companies risk becoming increasingly irrelevant in a rapidly consolidating global industry.The problem is simple - size. In Europe and the US, a series of mergers and acquisitions among the world's leading pharmaceuticals groups has created colossal corporations, giant global enterprises whose sales volumes make Japanese drugs groups' entire business look like a small division of a western group...more

INDIA
Locals beat back the big boys
India is the second largest pharmaceutical market in the world - by volume. By value, at a touch under $4bn according to IMS estimates, it comes a lowly 13th.Even so, that makes it the fourth biggest developing market in the world after Brazil, China and Argentina. Moreover, drug consumption has been clipping along at an annual rate of 15 per cent for more than a decade, putting it within striking distance of Canada's market...more

CHINA
Red tape slows western expansion
At Venus, one of a new breed of discreet sex healthcare stores opening all over China, a small blue pill on display in the glass cabinet may offer some solace to one local man but little comfort to the international pharmaceuticals companies operating in the country...more

CASE STUDY
Glaxo Wellcome
While international drugs companies still battle against widespread patent infringements in China, there are signs that the pharmaceuticals industry is beginning to have at least some confidence in the country's emerging regime for intellectual property (IP) protection...more