Understanding the difference between small molecule drugs and biologics—Part 1
or, why big pharma turned rogue
Learning and Education—the Route to Beating Big Pharma
Without learning and education, the world is shafted. We know that because education systems let the world down when it came to understanding how drugs are manufactured and distributed, and how they aren’t. I recently posted this which you may remember:
So, what follows is a fundamental piece of learning.
There are two broad categories of medicines, aka medicinal products:
Small molecule products (drugs) – those manufactured using chemical synthesis (industrial chemistry). Aspirin is an example.
With the molecules being relatively small, it is fairly straight forward to build a supply chain to copy a small molecule drug. They can be defined by a specification and identified with well established analytical methods.
The main supply chain characteristics are:
Long shelf life (typically 2 – 5 years)
Mainly …