Today’s pharma landscape looks very different to that of ten years ago. Big Pharma’s market share has been shrinking, ceding to biotech, generics, and other, niche, pharmaceuticals companies. With the cost of bringing a blockbuster drug to market beginning to top the $1bn mark, and governments in both the US and Europe trying to reduce their expenditure on drugs, the future for the traditional big pharma model looks rocky.

But the outlook is certainly not all doom and gloom. Emerging markets in both Europe and Asia are offering rich opportunities both as a market and an R&D base. The industry’s traditional model, based mainly on chemistry and basic biology, is giving way to new approaches based on biotechnology, computing, and advanced chemistry, creating myriad possibilities for new products.

But what will the industry look like ten years from now? How will the different players realign themselves? How can the issue of escalating R&D costs be addressed? And what new revenue models can be found in niche markets?

To explore these issues, Economist Conferences is once again holding its annual pharmaceuticals conference, now firmly established as a key forum for senior executives. Bringing together the most innovative minds from industry, science and academia, this event will give delegates the opportunity to access cutting-edge thinking on the future of the pharmaceuticals industry