Pharmaceuticals/Biopharmaceuticals

Pharmaceuticals/Biopharmaceuticals

Pharmaceutical/biopharmaceutical companies research, develop, manufacture and distribute drugs for human or veterinary use. The industry has several component subsectors:

• Innovator drugs, developed through extensive R&D and clinical trials in both humans and animals; 
• Generics, copies of innovative pharmaceuticals that contain the same active ingredients and are identical in strength, dosage form, and route of administration; 
• Biologics, derived from living material (human, animal, microorganism or plant) and are vastly larger and more complex in structure than chemically synthesized drugs; and
• Biosimilars, versions of biologic products that reference the originator product [1]. 

U.S.-based pharmaceutical/biopharmaceutical companies invested $97 billion in R&D in 2017 [2], with most of these investments made in the United States. Relative to other manufacturing industries, the pharmaceutical/biopharmaceutical industry invests 12 times more in R&D per employee [3] and employs the largest share of all manufacturing R&D workers in the United States. The industry directly employs more than 800,000 people in the United States [4] across a broad range of occupations, including scientific research, technical support, and manufacturing.