Infrastructure Needs for the Biotech Industry, a November 2007 National Institutes of Technology report.

As biotechnology advances and a major biopharmaceutical industry evolves in the US, these firms and the industry at large will generate unique infrastructure demands on Federal, state and local governments. New research sponsored by the National Institute of Standards and Technology takes a closer look at the future needs and the present state of the biopharmaceutical industry's technological infrastructure. Technology infrastructure is a broad concept that includes equipment, tools, data, and methods needed to develop new technologies and products. The new research indicates that the industry now spends a whopping $1.2 billion each year on its technology infrastructure. Within this total, $884 million supports drug-related R&D and $335 million supports commercial manufacturing and other activities. To their credit, the researchers did not simply seek to tally up these costs. They also sought to estimate the benefits of major efficiency gains in this technology infrastructure. While the projections differ depending on specific individual circumstances, the researchers estimate potential savings in the range of 10-40% thanks to major improvements in key areas such as gene expression analysis, biomonitors, and bioinformatics. -Source "The National Dialogue on Entrepreneurship" is an initiative of the Public Forum Institute made possible by a grant from the Kauffman Foundation of Kansas City.