Technology has 'vast impact' on pharma development

Pharma development has been vastly impacted by the advent of technologies such as chromatography and mass spectrometry, according to a report from Companies and Markets.

The analyst notes the technologies - including chromatography, mass spectrometry, DNA amplification and microarrays - that have changed the way pharma firms develop new drugs.

"Advanced technological developments in microarrays, bioinformatics and similar tools have increased the scope of applications and services," the company asserts.

Technology also helped the Human Genome Project to achieve success and, in turn, become an important part of DNA-based research in its own right.

After 13 years of research, the project was completed in 2003 and, after sequencing the genome itself, has moved on to a phase of analysis expected to last for many years.

With the market maturing, Companies and Markets says that operators involved in the creation of the technology behind DNA sequencing are now focusing on meeting specific needs as a means of differentiating their offerings from competitors.