Norak's founders think that beta-arrestin's movement from within the body of the cell to the membrane-bound receptor is a specific marker of GPCR receptor activation-and their method for watching it all happen in glowing green is the basis of the company's Transfluor technology.

Big Pharma's valuations are depressed; biotech is red-hot. Alliance volumes have fallen, but average deal values are up. The valuation divide masks the subtler cracks dividing biotech's elite from a mass of undifferentiated technology providers. Drug companies are recognizing that basing discovery programs around new, proprietary targets is highly risky and lengthens R&D time. Targets themselves, absent optimized lead compounds, are increasingly commoditized. Therefore, companies who don't provide integrated discovery capabilities aren't going to get the high-value deals that will justify their current, sky-high valuations. Meanwhile, companies with integrated solutions must back up their promises of productivity enhancement with their own money--though they also get a richer share of the end proceeds.

In this era of pharmaceutical industry consolidation, large pharmaceutical companies, and in particular the newly-merged, taking stock of their increasing bulk, have been heard to say that they will drop products in development that don't have the potential to achieve at least $500 million in revenues. Big pharmas are also looking more critically at their small products already on the market. For these large companies, small products could prove to be a distraction that diverts resources away from potential blockbusters, the kinds of products that the companies will need to grow by 15% a year going forward. In theory, then, as pharmaceutical companies up-average product portfolios in favor of high-revenue producers and prune away redundant or non-strategic products in the aftermath of mergers, many more commercializable products should become available for licensing than ever before. That is the hope, anyway, of a handful of new specialty pharmaceutical companies formed to acquire on-the-market products with the aim of growing their sales through a variety of strategies. These companies avoid product development risk but bear risk of a different sort. To be successful, they must be able to continually acquire products that can grow, and not pay too much for them.

A drug maker with a new CHF treatment will be helping to fill a serious unmet clinical need and benefiting from a huge, chronic care market. But development costs are huge and risks are high: the clinical history is lined with failed drugs. Thus, most CHF drug projects are in large companies; biotechs cluster at the pre-compound discovery end.