Development status and trend of pharmaceutical intermediates

Pharmaceutical intermediates are an important part of fine chemical industry, and their development level is a symbol of a country's chemical modernization level. For many years, the pharmaceutical intermediates industry has been the focus of the world's key investment and fierce competition. In the past two decades, the world pharmaceutical industry has made unprecedented progress. By the late 1990s, the world pharmaceutical market had reached about 256billion US dollars /a, and the sales of pesticides was about 23billion US dollars /a. In terms of medicine, although biotechnology and genetic drugs have been developing as a rising star in the past decade, important patent drugs have also been continuously accepted by people. The development trend of the world pharmaceutical industry in the future is: high technology, high requirements, high speed and high concentration.

The main features are the following five aspects: (1) new drugs emerge in endlessly, and the variety update is accelerated. For example, quinolone acid antibacterial agents have synthesized more than 20000 compounds and screened for antibacterial activity in the past 30 years. From 1962 to 1969, the successful research and development include: nalidixic acid, oxalinic acid, pyrrolic acid, etc. From 1970 to 1977, it was replaced by flumequine and Pipemidic Acid. Since 1978, fluoroquinolone acids have appeared and become the third generation of quinolone antibiotics, such as propiofloxacin (ciprofloxacin), lomefloxacin (lomefloxacin, ny-198) and ofloxacin (ofloxacin, ofloxacin), etc. Their antibacterial spectrum is wide, their activity is stronger, and their curative effect is comparable to that of the third or fourth generation cephalosporins. (2) The difficulty of creating new drugs is becoming greater and greater, and the management department has higher and higher requirements for the efficacy and safety of drugs, which has led to a sharp increase in investment in research and development. At the same time, the research and development of new drugs is long-term and continuous; And there are great risks. To adapt to the competition in the high-tech field, it needs to spend a huge amount of money. In economically developed countries, the percentage of R & D expenses in turnover (c/a ≈ 6.3%, c/b ≈ 17.7%) exceeds the turnover profit margin (d/a ≈ 5.2%). A-total turnover, b-pharmaceutical turnover, c-research and development costs, d-total profit (3) as a high-tech industry, the pharmaceutical industry needs high knowledge content. Pharmaceutical industry enterprises in various countries are constantly strengthening the strength of their research teams. For example, in American pharmaceutical enterprises, researchers account for 15% of the employees, of which 26.7% have obtained doctoral and master's degrees. (4) The number of giant enterprises increases. Pharmaceutical enterprises in developed countries expand their economic strength and development and research capabilities through mergers, so as to occupy the market and strive to enter the best scale. Take France for example, there were 1960 pharmaceutical enterprises in 1950, 880 in 1970, 392 in 1980, and 358 in 1989. For example, 36 mergers of Japanese pharmaceutical companies occurred in the 10 months of 1990, while there were only 10 in total in the 10 years from 1979 to 1989. They all adopt the trinity of scientific research, production (including APIs and preparations) and sales, as well as large-scale production. They also focus on the future. For drugs that are expected to become bulk varieties, such as naproxen, piperazen, ranitidine, etc., before the expiration of their patent protection period, they compete to find partners, develop new technical routes and new production processes, develop production, reduce costs, and expand sales, so as to be more conducive to participate in international competition.