Pan-European biotech - a guide to the landscape by Lehman Bros

There are now more than 70 quoted biotechnology companies in Europewhose focus is biopharmaceutical R&D, note analysts at Lehman Brothers in their newly-published study Pan-European biotechnology: a guide to the landscape. Two-thirds of these firms are based in the UK, and there is an increasing number of high-quality biotechnology companies in Germany.

The analysts point out that the term "biotechnology" is often a misnomer, applied not only to classic biotech companies whose technology base lies in molecular biology, but also to smaller pharmaceutical marketing firms which do little or no preclinical research. To clarify the situation, the analysts have sub-divided the sector according to their business model, as follows:

Tool providers: supply reagents and instrumentation to the biopharmaceutical industry, but have little or no in-house drug discovery and development; Platform companies: have a technology platform capable of identifying multiple genes/drug targets/antibodies, etc; Pipeline companies: have one or more products in development, but a relatively limited opportunity to identify multiple drug opportunities; and Emerging FIPCOs: fully integrated pharmaceuticals companies, with all the necessary skills from discovery through to marketing proprietary products.