|
Smoking cessation
represents one of the largest opportunities for life science companies in
terms of both public health impact and commercial potential. It is now understood
that smokers suffer from a form of chemical dependency not unlike other
well-accepted substance addictions. Recent decades have seen the
availability of products for smoking cessation that attempt to assist smokers who want to
break free of their habit, most notably the gums, patches and inhalers
of nicotine replacement therapy. Now a new generation of therapeutic
products – one approved and numerous others in development – that treat
smoking addiction at the biochemical level represent hope for the
legions of smokers who want to break free of their addiction. These
therapies – a group that includes neuroreceptor modulators, enzyme
inhibitors, and therapeutic vaccines – are approaching this market from
more than a half-dozen directions. Their developers include Big Pharma,
European biotechnology, and private companies with limited
capitalization. Only a few will be successful in this segment. This
report explains why.
Publication:
February 2007 |
