Dr Patterson will review the background to the pharmaceutical crisis and the different ways that companies are approaching the issues. The lecture will review both the research and development and business issues facing the industry and its investors. The Pharmaceutical industry has been through a period of unprecedented growth in the last three decades, fuelled by the advances in biomedical science and an increasingly affluent Western Society. Looking forward, the picture is less rosy with reduced research and development productivity coupled with increasing pre-registration data demands from regulators and burgeoning costs. Taken together with major products losing patent protection and the need for health care costs to be kept under control, the current business model is under threat. Dr Patterson will review the background to the crisis and the different ways that companies are approaching the issues. The lecture will review both the research and development and business issues facing the industry and its investors.