40 pharmaceutical companies in Alabama

Today, the essentials about pharmaceutical companies in Alabama are unraveled. Alabama is home to over 200 pharmaceutical companies, with an estimated annual economic impact of $7.3 billion and a track record of groundbreaking discoveries.

Southern Research, based in Birmingham, has discovered seven FDA-approved drugs used in cancer treatment, as well as significant advances in the treatment of HIV/AIDS, polio, and mosquito-borne viruses.

The HudsonAlpha Institute for Biotechnology in Huntsville is a pioneer in human genome research, collecting genomic data for thousands of academic, clinical, and commercial clients across the country.

The fact that organizations are magnets for National Institutes of Health (NIH) research funding underscores Alabama’s bioscience sector’s track record of innovation. The University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) received $325 million in NIH funding in Fiscal 2020 alone, an increase of $38 million from the previous year.

Aside from cutting-edge research and technology, one of the pharmaceutical sector’s most notable achievements is the high level of employment it has generated.

Nearly 18,000 Alabamians work in pharmaceutical jobs, with an average annual salary of more than $67,000. UAB’s economic engine is responsible for an estimated 53,000 jobs — nearly 10% of the total in the Birmingham-Hoover metropolitan area.

Pharmaceutical companies in Alabama are expanding across the state. Oxford Pharmaceuticals established a $29 million manufacturing facility in Birmingham, and Evonik established an advanced biomaterials manufacturing facility with R&D capabilities.

SiO2 Materials Science invested $163 million in Auburn to increase the production of its patented vials for the federal government’s COVID-19 vaccine program.

Huntsville’s Cummings Research Park (CRP), the country’s second-largest research and technology park, is at the center of a lot of activity.

With nearly 30,000 employees and a mix of Fortune 500 companies and homegrown innovators, CRP contributes to the success of many high-tech enterprises, U.S. defense and aerospace agencies, and higher education institutions.

The Alabama Drug Discovery Alliance

Drug discovery in academia, research institutes, and small pharmaceutical companies will become an increasingly important source of new therapeutics in the future, as pharmaceutical companies look for druggable, promising targets as well as promising compounds to in-license.

Although the exact numbers vary depending on how a drug’s origin is defined, it has been estimated that universities and pharmaceutical companies in Alabama already account for roughly a quarter of all new drugs and roughly half of all scientifically innovative drugs approved by the FDA, particularly those that address unmet medical needs.

It is well-documented that the pharmaceutical industry’s productivity has been declining, for which several explanations have been offered, including rising costs, institutional environments that are not conducive to creativity and innovation, shareholder pressures that are incompatible with the long-term view required in drug discovery and development, and a shift from research and development to marketing, with a historical, albeit shifting, focus.

Pharmaceutical companies in Alabama are hesitant to invest due to the high-risk nature of the basic research required to support innovative drug discovery, but academia is a natural fit for these types of investigations, making collaborations between academia and industry a logical proposition. However, due to a variety of factors, these collaborations are not always straightforward.

There is, for example, a mismatch between what the pharmaceutical industry and academia consider a validated target and a promising lead compound.

For example, in the academic world, the publication of a new protein target and its role in disease in a high-impact journal would be considered a great achievement, whereas, in the pharmaceutical industry, it would be considered merely a good start, with the ultimate validation being the existence of an effective, well-tolerated drug that manipulates its target in humans.

Furthermore, academic investigators are unlikely to have access to the knowledge and resources required to bridge the gap between an intriguing laboratory finding and a novel lead compound for disease treatment, allowing (pre-)clinical proof of concept to be achieved.

These factors, combined with the increased emphasis on translational science at the National Institutes of Health, prompted an increasing number of academic institutions to establish drug discovery programs, utilizing a variety of funding sources, infrastructure, and operational procedures.

The idea behind most, if not all, of these programs, is to ‘de-risk’ the basic findings of the academic researcher and grow a chemical compound to a stage in the discovery and advancement pipeline that is mature enough to attract pharmaceutical partners’ interest and investment.

The Alabama Drug Discovery Alliance (ADDA) is a collaborative effort between the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) and the Southern Research Institute (SR), both of which are located in Birmingham, Alabama.

SR is a non-profit organization that conducts basic and applied research in the areas of presymptomatic drug discovery, vaccine development, and drug development, in addition to becoming an academic drug development program.

Pharmaceutical companies in Alabama

Here’s a list of some of the pharmaceutical companies in Alabama.

Albumin Bioscience

The Alabama Drug Discovery Alliance

Pharmaceutical companies in Alabama

FAQs about the pharmaceutical companies in Alabama

Conclusion on the pharmaceutical companies in Alabama

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