Biotechnology's Impact on Diseases of the Elderly: A White Paper

Over the past 25 years many new biotechnology products have been developed to treat the growing health-care needs of senior citizens.  This research report demonstrates that biotechnology products have had a substantial impact on treating elderly patients in the eight major disease categories examined.  The data also present examples of the numerous new products under development that hold even greater promise for improving the health and quality of life of seniors.

This study represents a snapshot of biotechnology’s contributions and promise after a quarter century of research and development. The future is even more exciting based on the rapid rate of progress in genetic research and the completion in June 2000 of a rough draft of the human genome sequence, which will accelerate the search for disease causes and cures.

BIO represents more than 900 biotech companies, academic institutions and state biotech centers in all 50 U.S. states and in 26 other nations. BIO members are involved in the research and development of health-care, agricultural, industrial and environmental biotechnology products.

This report is available on BIO’s Web site at www.bio.org. For more information contact Dan Eramian, Charles Craig or Lisa Dry at (202) 857-0244.

Click here to read the full document (PDF).