There are two different approaches to Nanotechnology in Drug Delivery,  making drug crystals smaller to increase solubility and bioavailability, or using some form of carrier to deliver them in a more effective manner.

If we look at the total market size in 2021, it is a 60/40 split in favour of drug nano crystals although we feel that developing new delivery mechanisms may allow more value to be created.

The best performing nano carriers are shaping up to be:

1. Liposomes  (28%);
2. Gold Nanocarriers (17%);
3. Dendrimers  (17%);
4. Micelles (11%);
5. Polymer-based Nanocarriers (5%);
6. Nanoshells  (2%);
7. Ceramic Nanocarriers (<1%);
8. Calcium phosphate Nanocarriers (<1%).

Cientifica Ltd published Nanotechnology in Drug Delivery 2011  on 2 November 2011. Here’s a few of the key findings.

MARKET ANALYSIS BY KEY TECHNOLOGY

Of All Key Technologies Studied…

An analysis of the Total Addressable Market (TAM) in 2010, for nanotechnology in drug delivery (NDD), all key technologies studied shows the following values in 2010 (by descending order):

1. Drug Nanocrystals (596 US$ Million Dollars), (45%);
2. Total Nanocarriers (434 US$ Million Dollars), (32%);
3. Targeted Delivery (178 US$ Million Dollars), (13%);
4. Solubility + Bioavailability (139 US$ Million Dollars), (10%).

Nanocarriers as a Whole…

An analysis of the TAM in 2010, for NDD, nanocarriers as a whole shows the top 5 nanocarriers TAM values in 2010 as follows (by descending order):

1. Liposomes (118 US$ Million Dollars), (28%);
2. Dendrimers (84 US$ Million Dollars), (19%);
3. Micelles (63 US$ Million Dollars), (15%);
4. Gold Nanocarriers (56 US$ Million Dollars), (13%);
5. CNTs (56 US$ Million Dollars), (13%).

Nanocarriers Versus Drug Nanocrystals…

Regarding total nanocarriers versus drug nanocrystals, drug nanocrystals show a higher TAM value in 2010, when compared with total nanocarriers:

• Drug Nanocrystals (596 US$ Million Dollars), (58%);
• Total Nanocarriers (434 US$ Million Dollars), (42%).

So, how advanced is NDD now? Which trends are being designed to 2021? Where will be opportunities for investment? Reading Nanotechnology in Drug Delivery 2011 will answer to these questions and many more and explain why?

While working on our report on Using Emerging Technologies to Address Global Risks, one of my favourite SciFi authors, Neal Stephenson, popped up with an essay on Innovation Starvation.

It echoes Tyler Cowen‘s arguments that all the easy big stuff has been done,  and that all we have left to look forward to are incremental improvements rather than world changing technologies.

Stephenson, being a science fiction writer, looks at space as an example where a culture of risk avoidance, cost cutting and politics combine to stifle innovation. As he points out, even China’s space program is merely copying what the USA and Soviet Union were doing 50 years ago rather than doing anything innovative.

It is undoubtedly a problem that plagues the world.  Whether it is large ambitious space programs, or providing a government stimulus for technology companies, the emphasis is always on avoiding failure, which involves avoiding anything innovative.  The million lost by a failed company always generates more headlines for governments than the hundred million successfully leveraged as we can see with the furore over Solyndra – although governments have a poor track record of picking winners.

So how can we kick start global innovation? As I argue in Using Emerging Technologies to Address Global Risks we need to focus on the big issues that we can all agree on. Water might be a good start.

Over the past five years I have come across numerous innovative approaches to water scarcity, from desalination plants that double as greenhouses to nanostructured membranes that dramatically cut the energy needed for desalination, but I cant remember a single one of them attracting significant investment. That wasn’t because the technology is poor, it is simply because of the costs involved in getting it to market put it outside the risk which any early stage investor would be comfortable with. Raising $50 million for social networking is relatively simple, but for water remediation it is a stretch too far. Development times in excess of 3 years and uncertainty about who will pay for the technology combine to make it almost unfundable.

For a small fraction of the current cost of dealing with drought – something that will only increase in the future – we could develop a suite of technologies to mitigate the shortage of potable water. But we won’t.

I’m not convinced by the innovation starvation argument, I think we have plenty of innovation but we lack the political will to deploy them.  The challenge isn’t so much stimulating innovation as effectively making the case for governments and international institutions to use it.

Stop that talk of nanobots, this is getting silly!

The UK Ministry of Defence released its latest ‘Global Strategic Trends – Out to 2040‘ study last month, and it’s a good read (even for non spooks) covering everything from terrorism to to climate change and their impact on geopolitics.

The report identifies four key issues, Globalisation, Climate Change, Global Inequality & Innovation which will dominate the next thirty years. The first three are fairly obvious, but I liked the rather rational approach to innovation which seems to put the military at odds with much of the ‘Cleantech industry.’

Innovation and technology will continue to facilitate change. Energy efficient technologies will become available, although a breakthrough in alternative forms of energy that reduces dependency on hydrocarbons is unlikely. The most significant innovations are likely to involve sensors, electro-optics and materials. Application of nano-technologies, whether through materials or devices, will become pervasive and diverse, particularly in synthetic reproduction, novel power sources, and health care. Improvements in health care, for those who can afford it, are likely to significantly enhance longevity and quality of life.

For those interested in how the military see nanotechnologies, there is a specific mention:

Nanotechnology focuses on manipulating matter at the atomic and molecular scale, generally at less than 100 nanometres in size. At this size, and using other scientific disciplines, the characteristics of matter can be changed. This will create new and unique properties with profound and diverse applications. Advances in nanotechnology, at the interdisciplinary frontier where physics, chemistry and biology meet, will be a key enabler of technological advance, involving: new additives and coatings; materials and sensor development; and medical treatments and heath diagnosis. Products will be smaller and more energy efficient. They will be designed and manufactured with atomic precision and less production waste. Out to 2020, defence applications, in convergence with other disciplines, are likely to be predominantly in sensors, electro-optics and materials, including biologically active agents and surface- engineered materials. Additionally, integrated nano-devices will lead to the emergence of small, swarmed and autonomous systems. The application of nanotechnologies, whether through materials or devices, will become pervasive and diverse, particularly in manufacturing (strong lightweight materials for transportation applications), synthetic reproduction, novel power (battery) sources and health care (targeted drug delivery and augmented medical treatments).

Much of it is sensible, but the term ‘synthetic reproduction’ pops up a few times, perhaps a hangover from the old nanobot days when planners envisaged hordes of nanobots devouring enemy tanks?

The chart below shows nanotechnology R&D spending in the US and China corrected for purchasing power parity – i.e things are cheaper in China so $1 gets you more minutes of a researcher or a bigger bowl of noodles in Wuhan than in San Francisco (and parking is probably cheaper too).

Click to enlarge

The slowdown in the pace of China’s development has been one of the consequences of the current economic woes, but may also provide some great opportunities as James Fallows explains in the Atlantic. It’s an excellent article going far beyond the usual post Olympic slowdown stories and looking at how battery companies such as BYD with their electric vehicles are innovating faster than their western rivals.

The shift in attitude is neatly summed up in BYD SVPs Stella Li’s comments “Designing the car, building the car, that is the easy part” – or in other words once you have the battery technology right you don’t need Ford or GM any more, enabling you to capture the entire value chain, at least in a market for low cost basic vehicles such as China.

Coupled with the news that China is also the world’s most robust emerging market for private equity and venture capital finance and catching the US in both quantity and quality of nanoscience publications it looks as if the real innovation crisis is occurring in Europe where academic excellence has no easy outlet.

If we look beyond the short term, and try to understand what the economy of 2014 will begin to look like, it would be unwise to bet against the US or China, but I do worry about Europe, and the UK in particular where there still seems to be no coherent policy for getting academic innovation into the economy.

One of our old nanotech favourites, rabid sinophobe Lev Nazorov returns this week with a classic illustration of what happens when you read a bit of Drexler and let your imagination run wild.

Nazorov is rather obsessed with the Chinese threat to the US and contends that “China’s ultimate plan would involve the use of “molecular nano assemblers,” which are small self-replicating machines capable of moving through the ocean and destroying the US’s nuclear submarines. At that point America’s ability for “Mutual Assured Destruction” through nuclear weapons would be lost and China could either destroy the US with further nano-weapons or enforce an unconditional surrender.”

The proposed solution to this coming holocaust seems to be to produce a film to frighten people (and inspired by Al Gore, maybe get a Nobel Peace Prize instead of an Oscar)…

Let me now take a specific post-nuclear science or technology as an example. In 1986, Eric Drexler published his book, subtitled “The Coming Era of Nanotechnology,” and founded, with his wife, The Foresight Institute for nano research. I learned that the U.S. Congress refused, even in the 2000s, to allocate a dollar for this research. In the United States, Drexler, the American scientist of genius, was represented, due to the influence of producers of commercial nano goods, as a charlatan or an idiot.

In China, Drexler’s book was published on the Internet in English, with Chinese explanations of what some Chinese may find difficult to understand in English.

Today, more than 20 years after the publication of Drexler’s book, the Foresight Institute has ousted him: The Institute is without its founder and president. Some Americans tell me that there are other nanotechnological institutes in the United States, but I simply do not know about them because they are secret.

Yes, but who in the United States knows how far the development of nano weapons has advanced in China?

In 1945, Japan was a militarized country, complete with powerful intelligence/espionage. Yet the U.S. atomic bomb was such a surprise for Japan that it surrendered immediately and unconditionally.

The development of the atom bombs had been going on at many points in the United States and rumors about government secrets circulated freely in this free country.

Compare it to China, with its super-secret laboratories in craggy mountains, so that no one could drill a hole through the basement and install an instrument that would show what the lab is researching.

President Bush has never uttered a word about this secrecy. In the United States and the free West in general, the wages and salaries cannot be reduced by the government, while in China they can be reduced to the maintenance of a slave level. Hence, as a depression develops in the free West, many Westerners become financially linked with China and prefer to keep silent about China’s preparations to annihilate the free West.

Should an enlightening book on the subject be published, a tiny minority will read it. The major media believe that more money can be made by entertainment rather than by discussing China’s preparations to annihilate the free countries.

The way out is to produce a film worth its subject: the abyss ahead, facing the free world.