The next step, which major pharmaceutical companies are currently working hard to develop, are receptor subtype-specific drugs and other specific agents.
Many countries regulate such substances as therapeutic goods or pharmaceuticals or by some other category, without requiring them to be shown to be medically useful.
It is very important in detecting contaminants in drinking water, cooling water, water used in semiconductor manufacturing, and water for pharmaceutical use.
A few pharmaceutical companies have realized that training sales representatives on high science alone is not enough, especially when most products are similar in quality.
Unfortunately, many of the preparatory or process scale solutions used by pharmaceutical companies are proprietary, due to difficulties in patenting a process.