L.J. Sellers

Lifecycle management and line extensions helped the Percocet franchise generate steady annual growth, rising from $40 million in 1997 sales to $214 million in 2003, despite the fact that it had no patent protection.

Synta is in a very unusual position: Two Big Pharmas have paved the way with proteins, while the small biotech follows with a pill.

We had a vision that this project deserved a company with a focus on HDL as the next frontier in the cardiovascular area.

Nektar?the drug delivery firm formerly know as Inhale?has been around for 14 years, but its pace during the last few has been dizzying. In 2001, the company made two major acquisitions that not only expanded its technology base from inhaled therapeutics to a broad range of exciting new technologies, but also gave it revenue from five products on the US market that use its technology and lined-up another four in Phase III. In 2002, Nektar brokered 11 collaborative partnerships, and in 2003, it generated $106 million in sales.

The genomics revolution may not have ushered in the age of personalized medicine the way healthcare experts predicted, but innovative diagnostics keep pushing the industry toward the ideal of the "right drug for the right person at the right time. "One company that exemplifies that model is CeMines, a Colorado-based enterprise with an impressive, noninvasive cancer diagnostic in development. The product, which uses molecular fingerprinting to test blood samples, has had a 100 percent accuracy rate for every trial conducted. It not only determines-even in early stages-if a patient has cancer, but provides guidance for which type of treatment will work best.

In PE's December Pipeline Report, an unexpected Phase III candidate rose to the top. The drug: BioMarin's Aryplase. The reason for its success: an amazing turnaround job by chairman and CEO Fred Price. But Aryplase is not Price's first accomplishment at BioMarin, which was spun off from Glyko BioMedical in 1997. It is, in fact, only one of many that resulted from Price's efforts to jump-start a stalled company.