The biotech industry is the one to keep an eye on, not just because of the size, but also innovations – and biotechnology is a key field that drives medicine forward. This branch of science allows us to produce new drugs and therapies, nutritional substances, chemicals, materials and fuels friendly to the environment. Biotechnology employs living organisms to make new products – which can conjure up an appallingly wide range of products – from artificial organs to foods and simple house cleaning agents. Biotechnology changes our lives on a daily basis and has an enormous industry behind it.

When speaking about biotechnology, usually people tend to focus on the medical purpose of this field, and developments in this part are the hottest. Currently, we can look at the developments in gene therapy – which involves replacing defective genes with new, functional ones – as one of the greatest achievements in recent history. Scientists are studying stem cells, which can be grown in the lab and guided towards various cell types and then implanted into patients.

Thanks to new drug delivery systems - which include microstructures with holes large enough to dispense drug molecules straight at the target – we can consider a wide variety of new treatments.

There are lots of numbers that prove how big the biotech industry actually is – globally, the sales biotech companies reported were just shy of 140 billion dollars – this number more than doubled since 2008, and it is projected to hit 230 billion within 4 years. The total market worth is by some experts, expected to be over 700 billion USD by 2025 – a mind-boggling number.