RE:RE:RE:RE:Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) boosts biological drugs Small molecule drugs have well-defined chemical structures, as they are compounds that are manufactured through chemical synthesis. These drugs are typically either synthesized from or meant to replicate natural compounds produced by plants, fungi, and bacteria. Biologic drugs are extracted from, semi-synthesized by, or manufactured in living organisms using recombinant DNA technology, as opposed to small molecule drugs, which are chemically synthesized. This makes biologics more complex. Although biologics certainly represent the future of pharmaceuticals, this doesn’t mean they’re a new technology—human growth hormone, insulin, and red-blood cell stimulating agents are all biologics.
Biologics are perhaps best known for treating certain types of cancer and autoimmune diseases, but these drugs hold promise for preventing and treating a wide range of diseases and health conditions: anemia, cystic fibrosis, diabetes, transplant rejection, growth deficiency, and hepatitis all have the potential to be treated with biologics. Biologic drugs may be vaccines, antibodies, or interleukins, and they include therapeutic proteins like antibodies and peptides, nucleic-acid-based therapies, blood components, tissue therapies, and cellular therapies.
Perhaps the most significant benefit of biologics is their promise in treating diseases that were once considered either untreatable or difficult to treat. Even diseases that can currently be treated may be more effectively treated with biologics; some researchers believe that both bacterial and cancer cells are developing resistance to small molecule drugs.
While small molecule drugs often have off-target effects, biologics offer a more targeted treatment option, as they are designed to interact with the immune system in specific ways; they bind with high specificity to their targets on intracellular components or cell surfaces.
An additional advantage of biologic drugs is that they are less likely to interact with other drugs that a patient is taking because therapeutic proteins are metabolized and eliminated the same way as endogenous molecules. Particularly in aging populations, it’s common for people to take a number of different drugs, and many medical errors are caused by drug-drug interactions. Biologics can be used with oral systemic medications with a very low risk of drug-drug interactions.
The market for small molecule drugs and biologic drugs is growing due to groundbreaking new treatments and aging populations. While there’s a place for both in treating disease, the US and the EU have concerns over where the off-patent drugs (biosimilars) are primarily manufactured, which happens to be in China and India. This is due to China and India offering the lowest costs of production. At the same time most all of global illicit drug compounds are produced in China and India that end up on the streets of the US and EU.
Although small molecule drugs (pills) are easier to administer (oral route), biologics hold more promise in tackling hard-to-treat diseases and patients.