经济学人下载:生物科技 持续升温

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Biotechnology
生物科技

Fever rising
持续升温

There are reasons to hope that the latest biotech boom will not be followed by another bust
我们有理由相信此次生物技术的繁荣不会伴随一次衰退

AS INVESTORS and executives crammed into a New York ballroom for a conference held this week by the Biotechnology Industry Organisation, the mood was jittery.
本周，生物科技产业组织举行了一场投资者大会，当业界投资人和高管鱼贯进入舞厅充当的会场时，气氛颇为紧张。

The previous week eight biotech firms had launched initial public offerings in America, together raising more than 500m.
就在上周，有八家生物技术公司在美国上市，募集的资金总和超过一亿美元。

In a discussion panel on whether the industry's latest boom will last, a prominent investor, Oleg Nodelman, joked that he still had suitcases of cash for any firm that wanted it.
在一个关于此次生物科技产业的热潮是否会延续的小组讨论中，知名投资人奥列格?诺德曼开玩笑说：如果还有哪家公司需要资金，我这还有几皮箱现钞可以供应。

Biotechnology is the creation of drugs and other useful products by making use of nature's toolkit—that is, by adapting or exploiting processes found in living organisms.
生物技术是一种使用自然的工具箱，即通过来改造或利用生物体内的过程来创造药物及其他有用产品的技术；

For example, Argos Therapeutics, one of the latest batch of firms to raise money, is working on ways to trigger patients' own immune systems to fight kidney cancer or HIV infection.
比如说，最近上市的众多生物技术公司中的Argos Therapeutics，现在正在研究的通过激活患者自身的免疫系统来治疗肾癌和艾滋病的疗法。

The industry has undergone cycles of boom and bust since its inception in the 1970s, pioneered by firms such as Genentech.
由基因泰克等公司开创于上世纪70年代的生物技术产业自从其建立以来就不断经历繁荣与衰退的循环。

As the chart shows, last year more biotech firms joined American stock markets, raising more money, than at any time since the golden year of 2000.
如上图所示，自2000年以来，去年是美国生物技术公司上市最多、募集资金总额最多的一年。在

In the past 12 months, even as the S&P 500 share index has risen by 20%, shares in biotech firms have surged by almost three times as much.
过去的12个月中，尽管标准普尔500股票指数已经上涨了20%，生物技术公司的股价飙升幅度还是有其三倍之多。

One of the main causes for the millennial boom was that investors, flush with money they had made from internet firms, became excited about the Human Genome Project.
千禧年生物技术股市繁荣的一个重要原因是，在互联网行业赚得盆满钵满的投资者们对人类基因组计划感到兴奋不已。

They hoped that this massive, government-backed effort to lay out the entire genetic code of Homo sapiens would lead to a proliferation of profitable new treatments.
他们希望这项由政府支持的，旨在铺陈出现代人类整个遗传密码的宏伟工程能够催生出海量有利可图的新疗法。

Biotech's flowering is taking some time, however. Biology is complex.
但是，生物学是很复杂的，药物搞不好不是毒性太大就是疗效不佳。

Drugs have a habit of being too toxic or not working as well as they should.
生物技术的开花结果往往需要很长时间。

Indeed, creating new drugs through biotechnology is at the risky end of a business in which superhuman stamina and bottomless pockets are minimum requirements.
事实上，通过生物技术制造新药物是风险最大的行业，超人的耐力和充裕的资金只是最低要求。

The Boston Consulting Group reckons that 90% of the money spent researching new treatments, conventional or biotech, goes on drugs that ultimately fail.
据波士顿咨询公司估计，用于研制新药的资金，有90%都打了水漂。把之前的试错的损失算在内，

After spending as much as 2 billion, accounting for all the failures, a company just might have a medicine that works.
一个公司在花了20亿美元后，则有可能获得一种有效的药物。

But then it must win the favour of the world's most stringent regulators, and convince governments, insurers and patients that the drug is worth paying for.
然后你还必须通过世界上最严格的监管程序，最后还要费尽心思向政府、保险公司和患者推销你的药物。

Overcome these obstacles, however, and the returns can be fabulous.
然而，在克服层层磨难后，得到的回报会高得难以置信。

Stelios Papadopolous, a veteran biotech investor, argues that much of the recent rise in share prices is due not to froth, but because the industry is beginning to deliver promising treatments.
以为生物科技界的资深投资人斯特里奥斯帕帕多普洛斯认为最近该行业股价的上升大多不是泡沫引起的，而是因为有一批有前途的新疗法开始涌现。

In December America's Food and Drug Administration approved Sovaldi, a treatment for hepatitis C.
去年12月，美国食品和药物管理局批准了治疗丙型肝炎的药物Sovaldi，

It could now earn revenues of more than 3 billion this year for its maker, Gilead, a biotech firm from California.
这项药物今年可为其制造者，加里福利亚州的吉利德公司创造30亿美元的营收。

Biogen Idec, a firm based in Massachusetts, is expected to earn more than 1 billion a year from Tecfidera, a pill for multiple sclerosis that the FDA approved last year. The firm's shares rose by almost 90% in 2013.
百健艾迪一家是总部位于马萨诸塞州的制药公司，有望凭借其去年通过FDA审查的治疗多发性硬化症的小药丸每年盈利10亿美元。

But the question is whether such triumphs are aberrations or hints of other victories yet to come.
去年，百健艾迪在的股价上涨了接近90%。但问题是，这些公司的成功究竟底是个例，还是生物技术领域整体繁荣的前兆。

There are several reasons to hope that even if the current share-price and IPO frenzy subsides, biotech firms will continue to prosper.
有几点理由能让我们认为即使现在生物技术行业的股价开始下降，IPO狂潮开始平息，生物技术公司依然会继续勇往直前。

First, many smaller firms have become the research engines for bigger ones, explains Kevin Starr of Third Rock, a venture-capital firm.
首先，三石风险投资公司的凯文?斯塔尔解释称，如今很多小型公司已经变身为大公司的研发引擎。

For example Sanofi, a French pharmaceutical giant, now depends on Regeneron, an American biotech company, to help drive its growth.
比如说现在的法国制药业巨头赛诺菲，现在依靠美国的生物技术公司Regeneron来推动自身的发展。

This year alone, Sanofi will pump about 1 billion into Regeneron's research programme.
单单今年，赛诺菲就向Regeneron的研发计划注入了10亿美金。

The goal is not to Sanofise Regeneron or any other partner, says Christopher Viehbacher, Sanofi's chief executive.
我们的目的并不是将Regeneron或我们其他的合作伙伴赛诺菲化。

Rather, it is to combine Regeneron's capabilities in researching new treatments with Sanofi's skill in bringing them to market.
赛诺菲得的首席执行官解释说，而是将Regeneron的研发能力和赛诺菲将信品导入市场的能力结合起来。

Celgene, one of America's larger biotech firms, has a similar distributed model of research. It helps finance the scientific work at smaller companies, then usually takes over a drug's development as it moves into clinical trials.
塞尔基因公司，美国的一家大型生物技术公司在研发环节同样使用这种分包模式。

Besides being costly, these require expertise that younger, smaller firms often lack.
它先是资助小公司的研发工作，然后在药物开发进入到临床试验阶段是接手，因为此阶段的开发不仅费用高，而且要求小公司缺乏的专门技能。

Second—and more important—firms are at last starting to reap the rewards of studying the human genome.
第二点，也是更重要的一点，生物技术公司终于开始在人类基因组的研究上有所斩获。

As researchers illuminate the underlying genetic causes of a disease, they open up new routes to developing treatments.
一旦研究人员弄清导致一项疾病隐蔽的遗传学原因，就同时为此疾病的治疗提供了一种新途径。

For example, Vertex has a drug to treat a subset of patients with cystic fibrosis, thanks to a better understanding of the faulty gene that causes it.
比如说福泰制药公司有一种可以治疗患有囊胞性纤维病的特定人群的药物，就是得益于对导致这一疾病的缺陷基因更好的理解。

Bluebird bio, one of Celgene's small partner firms, which Third Rock also financed, is working on a treatment for sickle-cell disease that inserts into the patient's blood cells a properly functioning version of the faulty gene that causes the inherited ailment.
又比如塞尔基因的一个合作公司蓝鸟生物，同样也是三石风投投资的公司，现在正致力于一种治疗镰状细胞病的疗法：把造成此种遗传疾病的缺陷基因的校正后再插入患者的干细胞内。

Advances in genomics are making clinical trials smaller and cheaper, since it is now easier to identify which patients have the specific genetic trait that a new drug is aimed at.
基因组学的发展史的临床试验的规模更小和成本更低，因为现在若要确甄别出具有试验药物针对的那种特定遗传学特征的患者变得更加容易了。

This makes it more worthwhile to research diseases that are rare, and those that have so far proved intractable.
这样就使得那些对经被罕见的和一直被认为难以治愈的疾病的研究变得更有价值了。

The FDA gives special consideration to drugs that treat such ailments, so companies can expect a speedier path to approval.
FDA对治疗这类疾病的药物会给予特殊的考虑，所以制药公司会有望快速拿到批准。

Learning from mistakes
吸取经验教训

The venture capitalists who back biotech firms are trying to avoid the mistakes they made in the past.
投资生物技术的风投家们也正努力避免以前犯过的错误。

Index Ventures, based in Geneva, does not shower companies with cash to build lavish headquarters.
总部位于日内瓦的指数创投没有挥金如土去盖奢华的总部大楼，

Instead it assembles a tiny team of scientists and executives to oversee the research on a promising new line of treatment, outsourcing the bulk of the work to external contractors.
而是召集一个有科学家和高管组成的小组来监控有前景的新疗法的研发，并把大部分的工作外包出去。

This makes the costs more predictable. It also makes it easier for Index to halt a project when it looks like failing.
这样不仅使得成本更具可预见性，也能方便指数创投叫停可能失败的项目。

Despite all these reasons for optimism, there is no guarantee that the current boom will last.
尽管有这么多令人乐观的理由，我们不能肯定这次的繁荣会一直持续。

In these sunny times, it is tempting to forget the dark days that companies have endured.
快乐的日子总是会诱使人忘却曾让你备受煎熬的黑暗往事。

Twenty-five years later, quips Leonard Schleifer of Regeneron, I'm an overnight success.
我等了25年，Regenron的CEO莱纳德?施莱弗尔自嘲道，我终于一夜暴富了。

It is also uncertain that insurers and governments will continue to pay biotech firms' high prices.
我们同样不能确定保险公司和政府是否会继续高价购买生物技术公司的产品。

Vertex's treatment for cystic fibrosis costs a staggering 294,000 for each course.
福泰制药的治疗囊胞性纤维症的药物疗程的费用就高达骇人的294，000美金。

The most important question is whether research has indeed become more productive.
最重要的问题是，我们不知道生物科技领域的研究工作是否真的变得极富成效。

More than 80% of those recently polled by Mark Schoenebaum, an analyst at ISI Group, said yes.
国际战略投资集团的分析师Mark Schoenebaum在调查了80%的生物科技公司后，得出的答案是肯定的。

Mr Schoenebaum himself, however, is unconvinced. I'm not arguing definitively that it hasn't happened, he muses, but I haven't been entirely persuaded.
但他本人却对此结果存疑。我不是否认这一结果，Schoenebaum沉思道，我只是没有被完全说服。

There are no data yet, he says, to draw firm conclusions. And for all the advances in genomics, and the increased sophistication of biotech firms and their investors, there is still a lot of luck involved in R&D.
尽管基因组学取得长足进步，生物技术公司与其投资者的经验也在不断增长，但医药研发极富不确定性的情况不会改变。