Team:Sydney Australia/Applied Design
The Issue
The price of insulin is too high for many across the globe. For type I diabetics, who must take insulin every day to survive, and roughly 30% of type II diabetics, this issue constrains their quality of life. Worse still, diagnosis of diabetes is on the rise.
Currently 92% of the insulin market is produced by 3 pharmaceutical companies. In economics, this kind of market share is called an oligopoly. In these kinds of markets, generic or biosimilar insulins have a hard time breaking through, simply due to the enormity of market share that the other three own.
To make things just a little more difficult, clinical trial expenses and regulatory licensing means that very few small to medium sized manufacturing plants can enter the market. Because of these constraints, the insulin market is spiraled out, and as such, is largely unaffordable and inaccessible across the board.
Barriers to Entry
Click on the Segments in the Pie Chart to learn about the barriers to enter the insulin market.
Technical Barriers
In the current manufacturing world, recombinant methods are seen as difficult and time intensive. As a result of this, many avoid using recombinant technologies for therapeutic production regimes.
Legal Barriers
It took our iGEM team a full couple of months before we were comfortable to say that we had a new insulin to add to the market. We were also able to utilize expertise to navigate through the legal sphere, which greatly aided our process. In general though, due to the number of analogue insulins under patent, its very difficult to ‘create’ a new insulin.
Market Barriers
Every 5 years, the Australian governments Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme undergoes negotiation with the respective manufacturing plants and suppliers to discuss price points for that period.
This system ultimately favours highly established, elite market players with the market scale to supply an entire region.
Cost Barriers
When people say ‘nothing comes cheap,’ they’re really talking about drug development. To say its expensive really undermines the meaning of expensive. Clinical trials generally cost around US$1 Billion to start with. Production plants for insulin manufacturing can fall anywhere between US$100-$500M, and then a license can cost up to another US$100M. Understandably, these costs limit majority of the wishful market entrants.
Potential Solutions
1. PUBLIC TRADING SCHEME
2. OPEN-SOURCE INSULIN PUMP
3. STANDARD BUSINESS MODEL
4. PRIVATE INVESTMENT
5. BATHTUB INSULIN
6. PUBLIC INVESTMENT
7. GENE THERAPY
8. GUT BACTERIA INSULIN
9. ANIMAL
INSULIN
10.BLACK MARKET
INSULIN
Find out More Info About these Solutions By Clicking on Their Box!
1. Public Trading Scheme
BACKGROUND
ISSUES
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