Infographic: Investment Opportunities in Biotech
With the world evolving at an unprecedented pace, nearly every sector is being disrupted in some way or another.
In transportation, EVs were spearheaded by Tesla, which emerged as the first new American automaker in decades, and is now one of the world’s most valuable companies. Similarly, in the realm of AI, OpenAI has taken a leading position in large language models, demonstrating the immense potential of the technology.
Now, we turn our attention to biotech, an industry that is developing innovative treatments at an accelerated pace. In this graphic from sponsor MSCI, we explain the growing pipeline of biotech treatments, and why this could benefit investors.
Growth in Clinical Drug Trials
A clinical drug trial is a study performed on people to evaluate the effectiveness of a medical intervention. Since 2000, the number of trials initiated annually has grown by over 1,300%.
| Drug Trial Type | 2000 | 2010 | 2020 | 2022 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Monoclonal antibody | 60 | 623 | 1,833 | 1,685 |
| Protein & peptide therapeutics | 172 | 1,058 | 1,771 | 1,567 |
| Vaccine | 80 | 594 | 1,259 | 915 |
| Recombinant antibody | 50 | 513 | 984 | 860 |
| Cell therapy | 56 | 277 | 548 | 502 |
| Gene-Modified Cell Therapy | 16 | 148 | 355 | 423 |
| DNA & RNA therapeutics | 7 | 56 | 475 | 346 |
| Other biotechnology product | 28 | 236 | 362 | 347 |
| Total | 469 | 3,505 | 7,587 | 6,645 |
Behind every new treatment is an innovative company working to develop it. Thus, as the number of clinical trials grows, so too does the size of the investment universe.
Unfortunately, identifying suitable companies for investment is rather difficult. While a disease may have thousands of potential medicines, only one may ultimately receive FDA approval. This approval process can also take over a decade because treatments must pass several phases of testing.
Introducing the MSCI Life Sciences Indexes
To capture investment opportunities in biotech, MSCI has released a suite of thematic indexes that focus on key growth categories such as oncology and virology.
Developed in collaboration with Royalty Pharma, the world’s largest buyer of pharmaceutical royalties, the MSCI Life Sciences Indexes are designed to gauge the performance of pioneering companies within the biotech space.
These unique indexes can be used to benchmark growth, facilitate portfolio construction, and enhance investment research.
