BIO-Europe 2013: Nanotechnology innovation and the pharma industry

The future of nanotechnology in pharma has been discussed by the Nanomedicine panel at the BIO-Europe 2013 Conference in Vienna, Austria.

Vice chairman for the European Technology Platform on Nanomedicine, Laurent Levy, chief executive of Nanobiotix, said that while there are 49 products on the market incorporating nanoparticles, there are four times as many moving through the pipeline, with half of those already in Phase II or Phase III trials. Recent deals that he values at $1 billion show that the pharma industry has a growing interest in the potential of this new technology with an initial focus in oncology.

“A great wave of innovation is coming with a disruptive potential,” he said. “De-risking projects and developing data becomes essential, and even more key is bringing these programs to a stage where pharma can understand them. The applications and the unmet medical needs are the same for nanotherapeutics as they are for biotech, yet pharma groups have checklists based on biologics, not nano objects. If you do not tick the boxes on the checklist, it becomes very difficult to advance these programs,” he said.