Wound Healing Regenerates, Slowly
This article was originally published in Start Up
Executive Summary
Wound healing has long been a business of tape and gauze, not biotech. But now two tissue-engineered skin replacements and a growth factor have reached the market’s doorstep. Are these lucrative new product categories or not?
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The Rebirth of Dermagraft
Dermagraft is often mentioned as an example of a failure in tissue engineering, illustrating the difficulty of achieving return on investment in this field. The product was only a market failure, however; clinicians say that it worked to heal difficult wounds, and that it was just a product ahead of its time. Now small company Advanced BioHealing has given new life to the bioengineered dermal substitute, abandoned by Smith & Nephew, by supporting it with the focus, and the unique marketing and manufacturing skills that tissue-engineered products require. In the process, it believes it has created assets and skill-sets from which other tissue-engineering start-ups might benefit.
The People Business: The Renaissance of Population Genetics
New technologies enable the rapid processing of genetic information, but since gene data isn't associated with specific diseases and diseased tissues, in and of itself it isn't clinically useful. A new breed of start-ups aims to provide both the phenotypic and genotypic sides of the equation by creating databases of patients and patient samples. Still unclear is how much drug firms will pay for disease-associated gene data; genetics firms are taking various approaches to monetizing their databases, from focusing initially on high-value diagnostics to creating true target-discovery businesses, to selling their data along with associated software and services. There are also ethical issues to hammer out. The new companies must take care to protect patients' rights. They must consider the need for explicit consent to use the information collected from patients, especially when they are participating in research whose purpose is as yet undefined.
Re-Engineering Drug Development II: Clinical Data Collection & Management
Despite a history of failed products, start-up companies are looking to reinvent how data from clinical trials is collected and managed. Firms are trying to replace the point solutions of the past with broad software offerings that can take clients from "site to submission."