Pharmaceuticals/Biotech

Industry Overview

Working with plant- and chemical-based compounds, pharmaceutical companies work their mojo to make medicines that cure some diseases, manage others, and protect us from infection in the first place. Big Pharma includes a handful of major companies that dominate the industry. While many of these firms also produce animal health products, livestock feed supplements, vitamins, and a host of other goods, this profile will focus solely on their drug products used to treat human illness.

Big Pharma is one of the world's most profitable industries. During the last 30 years, the industry has spent billions of dollars on research and reaped billions in return. 

Depending on their size and strategy, pharma companies may conduct extensive research in-house or they may seek to license promising drugs from academia, other pharma firms, or biotechnology companies. The latter firms are generally smaller than their Big Pharma competitors, and they employ cellular and biomolecular processes to make medicines or diagnose illness.

Biotechnology, a newer area, has alternately been the sweetheart and the bane of investors in recent years. Simply put, biotechnology, the applied knowledge of biology, seeks to duplicate or change the function of a living cell so it will work in a more predictable and controllable way. The biotechnology industry uses advances in genetics research to develop products for human diseases and conditions. Several biotech companies also use genetic technology to other ends, like the manipulation of crops.

Biotech opportunities largely mirror those in the pharmaceutical industry. The key difference is that biotech firms are much more focused on research because they are still developing their initial products. This means that jobs for nonscientists are scarcer in biotech than in pharmaceuticals.

Biotech and pharma have been performing exceedingly well relative to other industries in recent years. And while there are problems lurking in the shadows at some companies, overall the future looks bright for these industries.  InternZoo offers opportunities in both the pharmaceutical and biotech industries.