Over and out…

This is my final issue as editor of Manufacturing Chemist. After six and a half years with the journal (can it really be that long?), I'm escaping into the jungle of freelance journalism.

During my time with Man Chem, the industry has seen sweeping changes. Many of the companies we wrote about when I started no longer exist — they have been taken over, spun off, renamed, realigned. Consolidation to save money through exploiting synergies has seen the largest drug companies get ever bigger. It would have been possible to write my Comment most months about mergers and acquisitions, and this month is no exception, with the already much-merged Bristol-Myers Squibb taking over DuPont's pharma business.

But the smaller end of the scale has seen dramatic growth, too, with myriad start-up biotech companies being created to take advantage of research developments. Drug discovery techniques have changed so dramatically, with the advent of combinatorial chemistry, high throughput screening and sophisticated computer-based technology, that the drug discovery chemistry laboratory I worked in in the late 1980s now seems a whole world away.

The unravelling of the human genome presents perhaps the most exciting possibilities for the future of the pharmaceutical industry. The staggering amount of information that has been generated will slowly be translated into understandable data about the nature of the human body, and the origins of many of the medical conditions that afflict it. The potential for new drugs is immense, and it will be fascinating to see in which areas the first developments come.

Biological drugs are set to grow in importance as a result, and this will have a big effect on drug delivery to avoid the need for needles to administer them. We are already seeing many innovative drug delivery ideas being explored, from devices such as inhalers for delivery to the lungs and nasal sprays, through injection devices without needles, to fascinating technologies designed to make drugs that are not orally available into tablet formulations. Delivery technology may not make the headlines that big-buck company mergers or the human genome project generate, but without it the genome revolution will be unlikely to create the patient-friendly products that will be the big money-spinners for the pharmaceutical industry in the future.

This is not the end of my association with Manufacturing Chemist, though, as I am attempting to replace the irreplaceable by taking over as therapeutics consultant from Sidney Hopkins. It only remains for me to thank all those people within the industry I have had the joy of meeting and working with during my time as editor. And I look forward to reporting on the many exciting developments the pharma industry will inevitably see over the coming years.