Biopure Case Summary

Biopure's two products, Hemopure for human use, and Oxyglobin for animal veterinary use, both represented a new blood substitute based treatment for managing patients' oxygen requirements in a broad range of potential medical applications. The main issue that is plaguing Biopure is how the possible launch of Oxyglobin will affect the future launch and pricing strategies of Hemopure, which could provide a larger return for their investment.
Biopure's strength lies in their ability to market its blood substitute products for both human and animal use. Biopure has a product that has been approved by the FDA for animal use and has the intellectual property that will allow them to protect their product for two to five years before other competition can enter the market using similar technology. The company's main
Biopure only has one manufacturing site that can only product either Oxyglobin or Hemopure. More units of Oxyglobin can be generated compared to Hemopure. This capacity issue could hinder their ability to bring a proper supply of both products to the market. This issue would allow their competitors to take more of a market share because the other two competitors have more capacity to produce their blood substitute product. Another threat to Biopure is how their product is created as compared to their competitors. Baxter International and Northfield Laboratories both generate their product by extracting hemoglobin from outdated human blood. Biopure generated their product by the purification of bovine blood. The consumer might have issues using a blood substitute that is generated via bovine blood as compared to human blood. Biopure would have to convince the market that the bovine blood is just as compatible and safe as the purified human blood substitute. Biopure might have issues in trying to persuade the public of this issue and loss out on market share if not