The survey of FDA-approved medicines unintentionally provided an overview of the history of the biotechnology industry.  Ongoing studies are identifying the innovators and their inventions that contributed to the approval of new medicines. A major finding of our ongoing studies is that biotechnology companies are being acquired and dismantled at a faster rate than their creation.  As biotechnology now is the primary source of biomedical innovation for FDA-approved products (particularly early-stage research), this raises questions about the sustainability of the entire drug development enterprise.