pharmaceutical industry

Introduction
History
- The origin of medicines
  - Medicines of ancient civilizations
  - Pharmaceutical science in the 16th and 17th centuries
- Isolation and synthesis of compounds
- The development of anti-infective agents
  - Discovery of antiseptics and vaccines
  - Improvement in drug administration
- Drug development in the 19th and 20th centuries
  - New classes of pharmaceuticals
  - Transitions in drug discovery
- Establishing the fight against infectious disease
  - Early efforts in the development of anti-infective drugs
  - Discovery of penicillin
- Discovery and development of hormones and vitamins
  - Isolation of insulin
  - Identification of vitamins
- Emergence of modern diseases and treatment
  - Hypertension
  - Early progress in cancer drug development
  - Pharmaceutical industry in the modern era
Drug discovery and development
- Drug development process
  - Research and discovery
  - Contribution of scientific knowledge to drug discovery
- Drug screening
  - Sources of compounds
  - Lead chemical identification
    - Lead compounds from natural products
    - Taxol and the Pacific yew
- Strategies for drug design and production
  - Structure-activity relationship
  - Computer-aided design of drugs
  - Combinatorial chemistry
  - Synthetic human proteins
Drug regulation and approval
- Regulation by government agencies
  - Public influence on drug regulation
  - Objectives and organization of drug regulatory agencies
- Drug approval processes
  - Drug applications
    - The Investigational New Drug application
    - The New Drug Application
  - Safety testing in animals
    - Toxicity tests
    - Teratogenicity and mutagenicity tests
  - Biopharmaceutical studies
    - Pharmacokinetic investigation
    - Dosage form development
      Tablets
      Capsules
      Other solid dosage forms
      Liquid dosage forms
      Semisolid dosage forms
      Specialized dosage forms
      Modified-release dosage forms
      Parenteral dosage forms
      Radiopharmaceuticals
Obstacles in drug development
- Adverse reactions
- Postmarketing adverse drug events
- Drug interactions
- Drug patents

References & Edit History Related Topics

Images & Videos

A lab technician wearing protective gloves and face shield lifts a rack of deep-frozen cells from a cryopreservation tank emitting vapor in a laboratory setting.

Penicillium notatum and penicillin

How penicillin was discovered and developed

research and discovery processes used for drug development

Close-up, colorized microscope image of green mold spores, representing microorganisms used in biopharmaceutical production.

At a Glance

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pharmaceutical industry summary

Related Questions

A lab technician wearing protective gloves and face shield lifts a rack of deep-frozen cells from a cryopreservation tank emitting vapor in a laboratory setting. — Cryopreservation A technician withdrawing deep-frozen cells for in vitro culture at a laboratory of a German pharmaceutical company.

pharmaceutical industry

society

Written by

John W. Dailey

Fact-checked by

Britannica Editors

Last updated

Oct. 22, 2026 •History

pharmaceutical industry, the discovery, development, and manufacture of drugs and medications (pharmaceuticals) by public and private organizations. The modern era of the pharmaceutical industry—of isolation and purification of compounds, chemical synthesis, and computer-aided drug design—is considered to have begun in the 19th century, thousands of years after intuition and trial and error led humans to believe that plants, animals, and minerals contained medicinal properties. The unification of research in the 20th century in fields such...

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