The New Math of Drug-Device Convergence

In Pittsburgh in mid-March, some 140 drug, device, biomaterial, and venture capital firms gathered at "Convergence: the Drug/Device Summit," to suss out the next major product opportunities to come from combining drugs and devices. The conference was organized by Bio and AdvaMed, advocacy groups for the biotechnology and device industries respectively, as well as the incubator Pittsburgh Life Sciences Greenhouse and Windhover Information Inc. The device and drug industries are pinning great hopes on convergence, since the highest profile example—the drug eluting stent—is already an almost $5 billion market that's forecast to grow to $10 billion by 2009.

But drug-eluting stents, notwithstanding their success, only skim the surface of possible drug/device convergence: already, BMP products such as Medtronic Inc. 's Infuse and Stryker Corp. 's OP-1...