Pharmaceutical innovation and its crisis: drug markets, screening, and the dialectics of value

Abstract

This article explores the recent debates on innovation in the drug sector, focusing on the ways in which the articulation of use value and exchange value operates in the hegemonic, Northern, form of pharmaceutical capitalism. Engaging with the abundant literature on the crisis of productivity, the paper uses the vast historiography of post-WWII pharmacy to propose a critical understanding of the crisis. It argues that the contradictions resulting in mounting issues of access, expertise and novelty are constitutive of the "screening regime" of invention as it emerged in the reorganization of the sector after World War II. These tensions have just accumulated during the last two decades and become more visible. This leads to a new reading of the present turn toward biotechnology and a more speculative (financial) and economy of pharmacy. In conclusion, the paper insists on the importance of two alternatives to bio-capital originating in the activities of Southern companies: generics and a political economy of access on the one hand, industrialized herbal remedies and a political economy of reformulation regime on the other hand.

On the momentum toward vaccine self-sufficiency in the BRICS: an integrative review of the role of pharmaceutical entrepreneurship and innovation

“…Yueqin ( 56 ) explains that rejuvenated state support continues to play a significant role in the accelerated growth of the pharmaceutical manufacturing market in the BRICS. Aware of the changing dynamics of human society, each member of the bloc has developed and launched a national pharmaceutical innovation strategic plan to encourage innovation in the sector by the private sector ( 31 ).…”

“…These technologies are capable of making tissues have the desired structure and feature with a good cell survival rate, which was a major limitation in previous techniques used in testing new pharmaceutical products (50). Through electro-hydrodynamic printing techniques, new 3D bioprinters help deliver higher cell survival rates and tissues with micro and nano-scale features (12,(51)(52)(53)(54)(55)(56). Thus, through pharmaceutical innovation, the BRICS countries have asserted their autonomy, boosting the quest for self-sufficiency (55).…”