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Apr 17, 2020

That simple truth about the severity of the disease is one of the reasons that Rafael Pharmaceuticals is slowly continuing with a Phase III trial in metastatic pancreatic cancer during the COVID-19 pandemic. While many companies have paused enrollment in clinical trials during the outbreak, Cranbury...

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Apr 17, 2020

Swiss pharma giant Roche is joining the race to develop a test for COVID-19 antibodies in people who have been exposed to the disease. This morning, Roche announced the development and upcoming launch of its Elecsys Anti-SARS-CoV-2 serology test to detect antibodies in people who have been exposed t...

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Apr 11, 2020

Rene Roach fired off a quick email in late March for an update on a colorectal cancer clinical trial for which she hoped to qualify. Worried about the coronavirus, she asked, almost as an afterthought, whether the study had been put on hold because of the pandemic.The answer crushed her: It had been...

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Apr 10, 2020

Medscape is the leading source of clinical news, health information, and point-of-care tools for healthcare professionals. Medscape offers specialists, primary care physicians, and other health professionals the most robust and integrated medical information and educational tools. Medscape Education...

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Apr 06, 2020

Batch and its Classification system are two most potent weapons used in Chemical, Pharma or Medical life science industry to record the potency of a batch or technically called as Active Pharma Ingredients(API). These material consist of one or more active ingredients, concentrates, carrier material...

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Apr 03, 2020

These are unprecedented times. The world is mobbed by a contagion virus, putting people’s health at risk, threatening to destabilize economies. It has already put global healthcare systems under tremendous pressures, and managed to resist efforts to contain it. Even though coronaviruses are no...

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Apr 01, 2020

One minor side effect of the pandemic is that perhaps more people will learn about what drug research and clinical trials can really be like. Today’s example: we have a clinical trial of hydroxychloroquine from Wuhan that has just published on a preprint server. What’s good is that this ...

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Apr 01, 2020

Pharmaceutical stocks have been somewhat of a safe haven for investors as the coronavirus outbreak spread from China to the rest of the world. But as the pandemic deepened, now resulting in more than 782,000 cases worldwide, even these "safer" companies are beginning to feel the effects. T...

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Mar 26, 2020

If you’re part of a clinical study team racing a new product to commercialization, you likely live by these two simple rules: time is money, and the first one to market wins. But just because it’s simple doesn’t mean it’s easy. That ticking clock is background noise to the re...

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Mar 26, 2020

Big pharma stocks have been clobbered during the coronavirus-caused stock market crash. You can count the number of drugmakers with market caps of $25 billion or more whose shares haven't dropped by double-digit percentages on one hand -- and have several fingers left over. Three big pharma stoc...

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Mar 20, 2020

One predominant and common element within our pharmaceutical industry, is our devotions to patients. Within supply chain there is always a focus on ensuring the right product is delivered to the right place at the right time in order to ensure patient safety and the continuity of medicinal supplies....

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Mar 20, 2020

Global clinical guidelines have shifted the industry toward risk-based approaches for the planning and execution of clinical trials. The ICH’s guidelines for Good Clinical Practice state that sponsors should evaluate identified risks against existing risk controls by considering “the lik...

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Mar 17, 2020

We’ve all heard the saying “treat the patient, not the disease”, and this couldn’t be truer in today’s ever-changing pharmaceutical landscape. We are living in a time of revolution – advancements in genomics and technology are improving our ability to develop prec...

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Mar 16, 2020

Accelerated by advancements in cancer treatments and a growing emphasis on personalized and precision medicine, specialty pharmacy represents a rapidly growing sector within the healthcare industry. In fact, the market is projected to grow to $500 billion by the end of this year—up from $200 b...

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Mar 11, 2020

The pharmaceutical industry is set to greatly benefit from the use of artificial intelligence (AI), due to its wide range of applications. Sydney Tierney discusses how machine learning can enhance marketing, manufacturing and drug trials. Artificial intelligence (AI) can be applied to nearly every a...

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Mar 11, 2020

Over the past half-century, clinical trials have grown increasingly complex. A flood of new data from novel sources combined with more elaborate study designs and tougher regulatory standards have lengthened timelines and hiked costs, contributing to a steady decline of efficiency. It all adds up: N...

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Mar 06, 2020

Pharma has deep roots in human history with centuries of folk pharmaceutical knowledge offering a hit-and-miss range of natural remedies. But the industry as we know it today actually emerged in the second half of the 19th century when the world’s first factory for the sole production of medic...

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Mar 06, 2020

Shares of Pfizer jumped more than 6% on Wednesday, after the company announced a plan to test some of its antiviral products as a potential treatment for the coronavirus from China. More than 35 million shares traded on the news — about 48% more than normal — as investors looked for any ...

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Mar 04, 2020

Everyone in pharma knows that product success depends on the results of clinical trials — but we don’t usually hear from the people who are involved in running them. Recently, four Clinical Research Managers (CRM) from Merck (known as MSD outside the United States and Canada) discussed h...

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Mar 04, 2020

The industry as we know it is changing. Pharmaceutical and life sciences companies across the globe are experiencing more pressure than ever to keep up with increased regulatory standards while moving at a pace that requires them to innovate in order to remain competitive. With more real-time automa...

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Mar 02, 2020

I recently discussed the different ways that consumer-grade smartphones can compromise patients’ health, safety and overall care. However, some clinicians and healthcare administrators have indicated in recent months that they need help selecting the right enterprise-grade mobility solutions f...

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Mar 01, 2020

Pharmaceutical manufacturers are constantly working to develop new and improved medications. Join us as we explore the non-specialty drugs you should be watching in 2020. If you missed last week’s article about the most important upcoming specialty drugs, be sure to check it out here. Approxim...

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Feb 27, 2020

The pharmaceutical industry is changing at an unprecedented pace. New biological treatments for cancer, and a dramatic rise of widespread diseases such as diabetes, call for new processing and packaging solutions to fulfill the different needs all over the world. Keep your eye on these five main pac...

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Feb 27, 2020

We go into a doctor’s office and leave with a diagnosis and a prescription. Next we stop by the pharmacy. In Germany, if your insurance is not private, you mostly don’t even know the price of your drug because it’s paid for directly by your insurance. You only notice the 5-10 Euros...

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Feb 25, 2020

Every member of the health care team shares a common goal of optimizing patient outcomes. Yet each specialty and position of the healthcare team has a unique workflow facilitated by various tools, from an operative report to a progress note. In this regard the pharmacist plays a pivotal function in ...

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Feb 25, 2020

Leading market participants in the United States pharmaceutical industry, logistics firms, distributors and other stakeholders in the pharma supply chain have come together to publish a report buttressing the need for industry players to adopt blockchain for tracking prescription drugs, following th...

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Feb 17, 2020

PCD Pharma stands for propaganda distribution. A PCD company gives brand name and support to its franchises. They also provide distribution rights and monopoly rights within a particular region. If a person wants to establish their business, it is a must for them to know the pros and cons of the bus...

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Feb 17, 2020

Painkillers like Oxycontin, Percocet, and Vicodin, have been prescribed by primary physicians, surgeons, dentists, and other healthcare providers to patients suffering from varying levels of pain. Though these medications have proven to be an effective source of pain relief, they have also proven to...

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Feb 11, 2020

Pain management is one of the most common reasons for the use of medical cannabis products. However, despite many jurisdictions – including Canada, Germany, and the Netherlands – now allowing the prescription of medical cannabis for this purpose, there remains little ‘high-quality&...

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Feb 11, 2020

The drugstore chain agreed to pay $7.5 million in fines after an unlicensed pharmacist at several San Francisco Bay locations illegally filled more than 700,000 prescriptions over a ten-year period. According to California prosecutors, Kim Thien Le stole license numbers from other pharmacists to fil...

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Feb 07, 2020

The pharmaceutical industry's top earners are cancer drugs a sentence that will be read to the surprise of no one. When sussing out why oncological therapies cost so much, the usual suspect is research and development (R&D). It takes years to develop a drug, deep pockets to fund that develop...

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Feb 07, 2020

Scientists from Trinity College Dublin have discovered that two very different species of bacteria have evolved distinct, powerful antibiotic arsenals for use in the war against their bacterial neighbours. By blueprinting precisely how the antibiotics function against methicillin-resistant Staphyloc...

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Feb 05, 2020

Despite halting development after disappointing trial findings in March, Biogen now plans to submit Alzheimer’s candidate aducanumab for FDA approval, after new analysis showed the drug just might work. Natalie Healey explores whether this high-profile comeback is justified. There had been suc...

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Feb 04, 2020

If a pharma company succeeded in developing a vaccine for the coronavirus in the timeframe many have promised, it would be a historic milestone for the industry. Since cases of the novel coronavirus in China were first reported over a month ago, the pharma world has been mobilizing at a breakneck sp...

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Feb 03, 2020

Artificial intelligence has been assisting humans in finding patterns in biological data in order to predict potential diseases. In a few cases, it is even outperforming prominent doctors in determining the ailments. However, with the latest advancements, pharma companies have turned towards AI to e...

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Nov 15, 2019

The way to accelerate benefit to patients changes over time as technology improves and innovation becomes more cutting edge. I’ve always looked for the more cutting-edge projects because, quite frankly, they’re just more intellectually stimulating for me. I like being on the vanguard whe...

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Oct 01, 2019

American family clinics, such as the Planned Parenthood Institute, first help women stop pregnancy . And immediately after, with half-closed doors, a very profitable journey begins. The aborted fetus is dissected in different parts, liver, kidney, thyme, skin, which are sold. A liver can cost up to ...

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Sep 17, 2019

The pharma ecommerce question doesn’t end with distributors. In fact, pharma manufacturers, too, must carve out a place in the digital ecosystem. So what can pharmaceutical manufacturers do to improve their customer experience through ecommerce? The article brought up a lot of great points, bu...

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Sep 16, 2019

The pharmaceutical industry is an exciting, fast-paced and ever-changing world to work in. I talk to pharmaceutical sales professionals daily, from Graduate Sales Representatives promoting ‘me too’ drugs, to Senior Sales Directors working on specialist rare disease products, and have a s...

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Sep 12, 2019

A paper from Cold Spring Harbor labs that invalidated MELK as a cancer target. That was straightforward enough: knocking it out via CRISPR across a whole range of cancer cell lines had no effect on their growth at all, so it’s kind of hard to make the case that it’s an important thing to...

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Sep 10, 2019

Valuing pharma companies isn’t the same as valuing non-pharma companies, for several reasons. The life cycle of prescription drugs is relatively brief, with high-margin revenue falling to zero almost overnight when drug patents expire. Pharmaceuticals are high-growth, high-profit, and high-ris...

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Sep 09, 2019

Most tools and technologies that do advanced analytics or search, especially in pharma, force you to build a common repository for the data before any analytics can begin. This means one must invest in building something like a data warehouse or data lake first, then add your analytics engine on top...

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Sep 05, 2019

With almost 2.7 billion social media users worldwide it is vital that pharmaceutical companies form a social media strategy. Social media has transformed the way both consumers and companies communicate and has become the norm across other industries creating an expectation for consumers and patient...

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Aug 30, 2019

At the time of writing, the United Kingdom (UK) is on its third deadline to leave the European Union (EU). What was deemed to be “the easiest trade deal in human history1” is now looking ever increasingly unlikely; and is beginning to cause anguish for not only the pharmaceutical industr...

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Aug 30, 2019

Great strides have been made in the diagnosis and treatment of cancer. However, a variety of challenges remain that frustrate both physicians and patients. Central to this is how to use the large amounts of genetic data now available. Dr Chris Gaj explores the challenges and potential consequences f...

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Aug 28, 2019

Smart devices and wearables are the norm of the day. We wake up in the morning to our watch reminding us of the number of steps to walk, the speed of our heart beats etc. The same watch vibrates if we are stationary at our work station, prompting us to move. There is a surge in health-related data g...

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Aug 26, 2019

Investment in pharma machinery requires lots of finance and efforts. Hence, the process needs to be very careful and considerate. There are numerous options in terms of make and models. Choosing the right one is difficult whether you buy a first-hand or a used machine. This post helps you to select ...

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Aug 21, 2019

Medicines are the most common medical intervention used across the UK and Europe. Unfortunately, falsified or fake medicines are entering global supply chains and have become a leading public health concern worldwide. It is, therefore, vital that there are systems in place to stop the manufacturing ...

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Aug 20, 2019

We cover three drug warning letters, one issued to a compounding pharmacy, one device warning letter and one in the food area that is a ‘first of its kind’. One of the drug warning letters is issued to a firm that recovered solvents that were used in the manufacture of the API of valsart...

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Aug 19, 2019

The Pharmaceutical industry has an annual turnover of 41.8 billion pounds, providing 8.2 Percent of UK goods exported and collectively employing 113,000 people, and is thus a major contributor to the nations ability to care for an ageing population and support an uncertain economy. What challenges d...

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Aug 14, 2019

Each year, 1.89 billion dollars is spent on patient recruitment for clinical trials.1 With a 30 Percent average dropout rate across all clinical trials, many pharmaceutical companies are spending a large amount of money to recruit patients who arent staying enrolled in their trials.

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Aug 13, 2019

DRUGMAKERS LATEST GAMBIT EXPLAINED: DESIGNED TO EXTEND MARKET EXCLUSIVITY AND STIFLE OR DELAY COMPETITION, AUTHORIZED GENERICS CAN BE MORE PROFITABLE THAN BRAND. In 1984, the Hatch-Waxman Act established the modern generic drug business by establishing rules for safety and competition, including gra...

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Aug 08, 2019

Closed loop medicines administration (CLMA) is the functionality that supports the cross checking of the correct patient, medicine and prescription using digital technologies. Specifically, checking should be used to confirm the patient identity against the medicine/dose due and the actual medicine ...

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Aug 08, 2019

Working on call could be one of the most stressful parts of a pharmacists career, but it is also an essential part of a junior pharmacists training and a time during which you can learn the most. Clinical learning is at the forefront of most junior pharmacists minds, but it is the operational learni...

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Aug 07, 2019

In today’s knowledge-based society, health care professionals (HCPs) have a responsibility to continuously develop and refine their skills through lifelong learning. Academic institutes can foster such learning through programmes of continuing medical education (CME). But what is CME and why i...

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Aug 07, 2019

The pharmaceutical and healthcare industries in the UK and across the world are facing a multitude of challenges. They are being challenged on how they differentiate themselves in a growing and crowded marketplace, how they engage with their audiences and how they remain innovative and relevant.

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Jul 25, 2019

What does the future of pharma look like through the eyes of a technologists background? We were fortunate enough to find out at last month at our 2nd annual GNS Forum. Shahram Ebadollahi, PhD, MBA who is the Global Head of Data Science and AI at Novartis AG, joined us to share his thoughts on how t...

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Jul 24, 2019

Rise and shine, everyone, the middle of the week is already here. And a hazy, muggy morning is unfolding here on the Pharmalot campus this morning, where the officials mascot is noisily snoozing and one of the short people is sleeping in. As for us, we are downing yet another needed cup of stimulati...

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Jul 21, 2019

A win for DeepMind, the AI arm of Google’s parent Alphabet, at a biennial biology conference could upend how drugmakers find and develop new medicines, according to Bloomberg. It could also dial up pressure on the world’s largest pharmaceutical companies to prepare for a technological ar...

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Jul 18, 2019

Artificial intelligence, or AI, is gaining more attention in the pharma space these days. At one time evoking images from futuristic science fiction, it now plays a significant role in smartphones, cars, search engines, and financial transactions. But what, exactly, is artificial intelligence? It is...

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Jul 18, 2019

Pharmaceutical and clinical industries are facing fierce demands from insurers, regulators, independent groups and consumers every day. In order to improve clinical trials and the drug discovery process, it is important to build better communication and links between all the stakeholders. This means...

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Jul 17, 2019

Canada implemented its patent term extension program, the Certificate of Supplementary Protection (CSP) framework, on September 21, 2017. The CSP regime is beneficial to qualifying pharmaceutical product developers because it can add up to two additional years of patent protection. Notably, CSP is n...

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Jul 17, 2019

In pharma, the sales process often starts with content, or a relationship may have started with some form of content. Great pharma content marketing follows a set of connected principles. Content marketing is the building of a narrative that looks to speak to target audiences, segments and personas ...

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Jul 16, 2019

There were six warning letter postings during this week: three drug warning letters including one regarding Akorn’s site in Somerset, NJ that the company announced a few weeks ago, one to a device manufacturer, one to an IRB, and one to a compounding pharmacy.

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Jul 12, 2019

CLM has a huge impact on pharma companies, causing a major change in firm culture & ways of working, because of this new concept introduction. The idea is to create a virtuous circle between a target & a multi-channel digital marketing tool aimed for sales. CLM captures the Health Care Profe...

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Jul 12, 2019

National Health Commission has just released the first version of its monitoring catalogue for rational drug use. This is the first national-level policy aimed to curb “irrational drug use”; previous attempts have been trial runs at the provincial and municipal levels. The policy monitor...

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Jul 12, 2019

Pharmas are growing more assured in their use of digital channels and are increasingly taking a robust multichannel approach to healthcare professional engagement, moving away from their traditional focus on direct sales. Even so, many brands continue to miss the mark with their multichannel HCP eff...

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Jul 11, 2019

Before getting to the language of patients or “patient voice,” it is useful to understand that “we are not all patients.” Carolyn Thomas, writer and patient advocate, explains that, being a patient “sometime or other in life” is not the same thing as being a patie...

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Jul 11, 2019

Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer (NSCLC) is a designation that accounts for more than 80 percent of lung cancers diagnosed, and it has emerged as a new hotspot for investment by pharma manufacturers. Globally, the NSCLC therapeutics market is expected to rise to a valuation of US $15.1 billion by 2023, wi...

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Jul 10, 2019

In 2017, U.S. healthcare spending grew 3.9 percent, reaching $3.5 trillion. On average, that’s more than $10,000 per person. Smaller employers are having a hard time keeping up with rising costs, causing many to move to high-deductible plans that shift the cost burden onto the employee, says R...

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Jul 10, 2019

A former colleague was telling me the other day about some not-so-pleasant surprises that occurred when he was helping to clean out a lab that hadn’t had some cabinets opened in a while, and I think many readers will have had such experiences. Academic labs are particularly prone to Easter egg...

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Jul 08, 2019

Well, I spent the holiday weekend here sending out pictures of food on my Twitter account, so I suppose it’s only fitting that I blog about a related topic today. But it also touches on metabolic enzymes, transcription factors, and death by cyanide, so there’s something for most everyone...

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Jul 04, 2019

If you are watching television in the United States, you are more than likely to see at least one drug commercial. These direct-to-consumer ads, as the industry knows them, offer brief testimonials of a drug’s effectiveness and safety, but typically leave out the drug’s price. As a bold ...

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Jul 03, 2019

At the recently concluded annual meeting of the American Medical Association (AMA) in Chicago, AMA delegates adopted a doozy of a new policy. The powerful trade group agreed to develop model legislation that pressures state legislatures into allowing minors to "override refusenik parents on vac...

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Jun 30, 2019

It’s no secret that technology has had a major impact not only on our daily activities, but also on businesses in almost every industry. The pharma industry, in particular, has seen major changes throughout many operations due to the implementation of technology. Technology such as Artificial ...

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Jun 26, 2019

News broke yesterday morning (first at the Wall Street Journal, I believe) that Abbvie has agreed to acquire Allergan. This is one of the larger pharma mergers of recent years, and regular readers of this site will have a pretty good idea of the sigh and roll of the eyes with which I greet it. I thi...

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Jun 26, 2019

Acceleron Pharma Inc. (Nasdaq:XLRN), a leading biopharmaceutical company in the discovery and development of TGF-beta superfamily therapeutics to treat serious and rare diseases, announced today it has completed target enrollment of patients with pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH) in the PULSAR P...

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Jun 26, 2019

Eli Lilly’s type 2 diabetes drug Trulicity hit the mark in a late-stage trial that showed higher doses of the medication significantly reduced A1C from baseline compared to the once-per-week dose of Trulicity currently on the market. Trulicity (dulaglutide) is currently approved for type 2 dia...

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Jun 21, 2019

Compliance with regulatory standards does not mean that life sciences companies should ignore ISO standards. We all know that implementing a management system or operational excellence program into a life science company’s workflow isn’t without its costs.

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Jun 21, 2019

Conducting clinical trials in one’s private practice—as opposed to hospitals or universities—has become more customary in clinical research. This trend is resulting in patients feeling more comfortable with participating in trials and is also providing physicians with unique benefi...

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Jun 17, 2019

At Alliance Pharma, our large molecule mass spec group focuses primarily on two areas: protein characterization and low level quantitative bioanalysis. We take pride in our dedication to providing clients with all of the analytical information they need about their protein of interest, with agility ...

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Jun 12, 2019

Continuous manufacturing is based on a number of requirements driven by the Pharmaceutical industry; quality, efficiency and speed to market being some of these. Bosch fulfilled these requirements when it released Xelum in 2017. The Xelum platform allows for faster development times and a reduced ri...

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Jun 07, 2019

The consequences of consuming synthetic drugs (chemicals) are aplenty. The instances of pharmacovigilance keep surfacing, and they tarnish brand value which has long-lasting impact for a pharmaceutical company. As a result, most players developing drugs for complex diseases have ventured into discov...

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Jun 03, 2019

Chronic kidney disease (CKD) is a growing health problem with an estimated prevalence of around 11.5%.Individuals with CKD are at high risk for progressive kidney failure. End-stage kidney disease leads to considerable human and financial costs with a 5-year survival rate of less than 50%. There are...

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Jun 03, 2019

Hemp, the non-psychoactive breed of cannabis, is the most versatile crop known to humans with thousands of uses in industry. Cannabis oil relieves chronic pain in debilitating illnesses such as cancer in both children and adults. Countries are beginning to consider decriminalising and legalising can...

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Jun 02, 2019

Despite the index’s dip, a number of NASDAQ biotech and pharma stocks still had notable share price increases last week. In particular, Genocea Biosciences (NASDAQ:GNCA) spiked on its announcement that the Journal of Clinical Oncology chose the company’s GEN-009 clinical results to be pr...

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May 31, 2019

The United States has over the past four decades imposed a wide range of economic sanctions to punish Iran for a number of undesired policies. While Trump administration officials continue to insist that food and medicine are exempt from US sanctions, and that sanctions do not hurt the Iranian peopl...

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May 31, 2019

With prices climbing for lifesaving drugs like insulin, the regulation of Big Pharma is frequently in the news. Historian Dominique A. Tobbell writes that we’ve been having this debate since the 1950s. Back then, Senator Estes Kefauver, a Tennessee Democrat, became worried about the high price...

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May 30, 2019

The digital marketing strategies for pharma companies tend to change pertaining to the region which means the same company needs to adopt different marketing strategies accordingly for its growth.

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May 30, 2019

Do you own a micro-sized or small company? If yes, then what business model do you think will be ideal when you aim at doing a profitable business?Ask anyone who is an expert in the niche, and you will get the answer, “pharma franchise business.” Statistics also prove the statement. Chec...

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May 30, 2019

If everyone responded to TV drug ads’ prompts to “ask your doctor” or “check with your physician” about using the product, doctors likely would have no time to treat people. They’d be spending all their working hours answering questions. It used to be that the dog...

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May 29, 2019

Alan joined Matoke Pharma last year, having previous spent 35 years at Bayer, and he explained how that part of his career unfolded, from sales rep to antibiotics clinical research and then to global marketing and brand manager roles before ending with a series of senior management positions.

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May 29, 2019

More than 200 companies represent the global pharmaceutical market, yet only 25 consistently reported their direct and indirect greenhouse gas emissions in the past five years. Of those, only 15 reported their emissions since 2012.One immediate and striking result is that the pharmaceutical sector i...

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May 29, 2019

Pharma must deliver much more than drugs on the way to a more consumer-oriented industry. Attention on continuous R&D innovation M&A activities often are only one element of pharma companies to maintain or strengthen their position in changing markets. Given the number of changes and challen...

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May 28, 2019

On the roles of academia and industry in drug discovery. Which is a topic that refuses to go away. I am prepared to swear that before starting this blog I had no idea of how many people are convinced that the drug industry does little or no research, and that academic labs discover all the drugs. I ...

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May 28, 2019

Hope for the opioid crisis: It's no secret that opioid deaths and overdoses are at crisis levels in the US. However, 2019 may bring new ways of fighting this epidemic. Every year, the Cleveland Clinic releases the most important medical advancements for the coming year, and at the top of its lis...

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May 27, 2019

Winter has arrived and with it colds and flu. If you’re thinking of using meds that have been in the cabinet for months don’t do it. Spokesperson for pharmaceutical company Pharma Dynamics Nicole Jennings says keeping unused medication is not advised as it can lead to misuse and accident...

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May 24, 2019

Oral drug delivery has maintained a position of strength within the bio/pharma industry for a number of years, yet challenges associated with oral delivery, such as the harsh conditions of the gastrointestinal tract and enzymatic breakdown, have given rise to the advancement of alternative approache...

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May 23, 2019

You’d be hard-pressed to find someone who’s lost more during the recent upheaval in the generic drug business than Dilip Shanghvi: He forfeited $17 billion to be precise, plus the title of India’s richest man.After a four-year decline that erased 65 per cent from the value of Sun P...

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May 22, 2019

Earlier this month, sophisticated cyber thieves hacked into the databases of Charles River Laboratories and compromised some client data. Hacks like this have happened before and they are bound to happen again – perhaps sooner, rather than later.Andrew Douthwaite, chief technology officer for ...

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May 14, 2019

Denmark-based Zealand said dasiglucagon hit all primary and secondary endpoints in the late-stage trial assessing the safety and efficacy of the glucagon analog for severe hypoglycemia in diabetes patients. Zealand noted that dasiglucagon is a potential first-in-class therapy that is in development ...

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May 08, 2019

Payment-by-outcomes and digital therapeutics (DTx) count among the serious challenges the pharma industry must negotiate in the coming years. They have the potential to change what healthcare industry reimburses. Rather than a drug alone, it will seek a package of drug, digital services and digital ...

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May 03, 2019

With generics attacking Advair, GlaxoSmithKline has talked up prospects for 3-in-1 respiratory med Trelegy. Now, the company has data in hand that could help it move into the asthma arena—though it's not all positive. Thursday, GSK released phase 3 trial data showing Trelegy had topped Bre...

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Apr 26, 2019

Bausch Health, formerly known as Valeant Pharmaceuticals International, announced that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) had approved its Duobrii (halobetasol propionate and tazoretene) Lotion for plaque psoriasis. The drug, developed by a Bausch division, Ortho Dermatologics, was rejected...

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Apr 24, 2019

The proteome of the cell genome is more insightful compared to its transcriptome as proteins directly determine and alter cellular function. Post‐translational modification of existing proteins, increased abundance or allosterically modulated protein conformations have been tied to complex diseases,...

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Apr 22, 2019

Word came out just before the weekend (first at Endpoints) that GlaxoSmithKline is laying off R&D employees at both Stevenage (UK) and Upper Providence (US). Current leadership is re-organizing drug discovery efforts to put more emphasis on oncology, immunology and genetic-linked disease, and th...

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Apr 16, 2019

Vetter, a global operating Contract Development and Manufacturing Organization (CDMO) announced today that a significant level of expansion activities are nearing completion at its US clinical manufacturing facility located at the Illinois Science & Technology Park in suburban Chicago. The ongoi...

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Apr 16, 2019

Financing and creating enduring confidence around a deal like Takeda’s $62 million purchase of Shire. To continue reading The Pharma Letter please login, subscribe or claim a 7 day free trial subscription and access exclusive features, interviews, round-ups and commentary from the sharpest min...

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Apr 15, 2019

The sensory and textural properties of foods can be attributed to monosaccharides, such as glucose, fructose, sucrose, and oligo and polysaccharides. The main difficulty while analyzing sugars is the variable isomeric forms that they can be present in. For example, glucose can be present in several ...

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Apr 15, 2019

“China is a horror, India is a mega-horror,” says Alan Westwood, managing director of Matoke, a company hoping to develop a new form of antibiotic. “Russia is terrible. Don’t get sick in Greece either, the resistance rates are big, and in southern Europe generally.” Ant...

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Apr 15, 2019

In an industry that evolves every day, having first mover advantage is a must for any pharmaceutical manufacturer looking to compete. Knowledge, infrastructure and foresight are key to remain efficient and agile as the industry faces numerous forces which are reshaping and dictating the direction of...

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Apr 12, 2019

A new report shows that the big pharma has enjoyed a whopping $7 billion tax cut in 2018 thanks to Trump’s new corporate-friendly tax rules. In just over a week’s time, Oxfam will be confronting Johnson & Johnson execs at the company’s big shareholder meeting -- and delivering ...

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Apr 11, 2019

Neutropenia is a common, often severe adverse effect experienced by cancer patients who are undergoing chemotherapy treatment. We recently spoke with Dr Lan Huang, CEO at BeyondSpring, a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company to learn more about the company’s efforts to develop innovative im...

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Apr 11, 2019

OTTAWA, April 11, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Tetra Bio-Pharma Inc. (“Tetra” or the “Company”) (TSX-V: TBP) (OTCQB: TBPMF), today announced that it has entered into a collaboration agreement with Ovensa Inc. (“Ovensa”) to evaluate TRIOZAN™, a proprietary n...

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Apr 10, 2019

Enesi Pharma (“Enesi”), an innovative pharmaceutical company developing unique injectable solid dose drug-device vaccine products and scientists at the world-renowned Oxford Vaccine Group (“OVG”) at the University of Oxford, announce they have entered into a collaborative agr...

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Apr 09, 2019

Four pharmaceutical companies — Johnson & Johnson, Pfizer, Merck and Abbott Laboratories — collectively kept $7 billion in tax savings in 2018 due to Republicans' 2017 corporate tax overhaul, according to a new Oxfam report. The bottom line: Oxfam's results mirror our reporti...

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Apr 03, 2019

Every domain has its own language. The same word used in different domains can have totally different meanings. In fact, the same word can mean two separate things for different subdomains, eg. in science, hedgehog is both animal and protein. Moreover, domain language is dominated by abbreviations a...

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Mar 20, 2019

For years, the biggest employers of science and engineering PhDs have been academic institutions. For example, according to the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF)’s biennial Survey of Doctoral Recipients, academia employed 11 percent more PhDs than the private sector in 1997. The NSF Surve...

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Jul 02, 2018

Adamis Pharmaceuticals is selling U.S. commercial rights to Symjepi, a competitor to Mylan’s EpiPen, to Novartis.Although financial details were not released, Novartis’ Sandoz division will pay Adamis an upfront fee and various performance-based milestone payments. Net profits in the U.S...

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Jun 25, 2018

In a cheerful cacophony of start-up and recruiter pitches, emerging-science talks and investment-banking tips, laptop displays and card exchanges in English and in Mandarin more than 1,000 Philadelphia-area scientists, pharma professionals, and people who want to do business with them jammed a hotel...

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Jun 19, 2018

Venture capitalists are flexing their muscles today with the significant support of pharma and biotech companies. Approximately $250 million in financing has been secured to support various pipelines to address multiple concerns. Boston-based Decibel Therapeutics secured $55 million in a Series C fi...

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Jun 12, 2018

America’s opioid epidemic is a grave public health issue, one that experts and a growing national consensus say we need to approach with solutions based in science and treatment. Unfortunately, some lawmakers haven’t gotten the memo and want to continue with the failed and inhumane strat...

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Jun 11, 2018

ON Wednesday last week, the non-profit Natural Resources Defense Council revealed that pig herds in the United States receive almost as many antibiotics as people in this country do. That’s bad news, especially since most of the pigs receiving antibiotics aren’t sick, but instead are get...

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May 31, 2018

Madrigal Pharmaceuticals Inc’s shares more than doubled after mid-stage trial data showed its lead drug reduced liver fat in patients with fatty liver disease, placing it ahead of larger rivals to tap into a potential market worth $30 billion.Often dubbed the “silent disease” becau...

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May 28, 2018

A virus named after Kampung Sungai Nipah, a village in Malaysia, where it was first discovered in 1998-99. The virus, that eventually killed 105 people in Malaysia, was first suspected to be Japanese encephalitis (JE) which, like the Nipah virus, induces brain inflammation. According to a paper by D...

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May 23, 2018

Cancer immunotherapy is an exciting, relatively new therapy that treats cancer by unleashing the power of the immune system. It has been hailed as one of the most promising advances in the treatment of cancer in recent times. Immuno-oncology research is growing at a rapid pace and for the last three...

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May 23, 2018

Simply put, Big Pharma has been a long time opponent of legalizing medical marijuana as it threatens to ruin its business and drop the market cap for pharmaceutical drug companies.Even though medical cannabis has been legalized in more than half of the US states, all of Canada and in Mexico, prices ...

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May 22, 2018

Is a life worth a free meal? This might not exactly be the way the question is phrased in a research letter published in JAMA, yet that’s the underlying assumption you’re left with. After reviewing two years of data on prescription rates, it appears doctors were influenced by free meals ...

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May 15, 2018

(DCNF) Major pharmaceutical companies heavily influenced doctors to prescribe high rates of opioid medications with lavish spending, new research suggests. Doctors, who received paid speaking gigs, free lunches and branded merchandise from drug makers, were linked to much high rates of opioid prescr...

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May 12, 2018

The ‘Global and Chinese Nasal Drug Delivery Technology Industry, 2013-2023 Market Research Report’ is a professional and in-depth study on the current state of the global Nasal Drug Delivery Technology industry with a focus on the Chinese market. The report provides key statistics on the...

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May 09, 2018

The recent ban on codeine-containing cough syrup by the Federal Government, shutting down Emzor Pharmaceuticals Ind. Ltd., Peace Standard Pharmaceutical Limited and Bioraj Pharmaceutical Limited is a knee jerk response to the drug abuse problem experts have said. The ban is echoing in the public spa...

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May 09, 2018

Anti-conception medication pills which are also called as oral contraceptive pills are a kind of female hormonal anti-conception medication technique and are extremely viable at avoiding pregnancy. The Pills are small tablets that a patient swallow every day. Most pills contain two sorts of manufact...

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Apr 25, 2018

To continue reading this article and to access exclusive features, interviews, round-ups and commentary from the sharpest minds in the pharmaceutical and biotechnology space you need to be logged into the site and have an active subscription or trial subscription. Please login or subscribe in order ...

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Apr 18, 2018

Speaking to a group of law enforcement officials in Raleigh, NC yesterday, Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced proposed rule changes to the way the Drug Enforcement Administration sets quotas on the manufacturing of opioids. The DEA now presumes to be able to divine the likelihood a particular ...

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Apr 17, 2018

Wiltshire-based Alliance Pharma, the specialty pharmaceutical group, have announced that it has agreed to sell its 60% interest in non-core Unigreg Limited to its joint venture partner, Pacific Glory Development Limited, for £2.9 million. Unigreg owns the rights to Forceval, a micro-nutrient s...

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Apr 09, 2018

The troubled pharma sector is expected to report weak Q4FY18 numbers, with their profit after tax (PAT) likely to decline by 9 per cent year-on-year (YoY) and rupee appreciation may put pressure on their realisations, industry analysts said. Edelweiss research analyst Deepak Malik said the firm expe...

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Apr 08, 2018

After speaking with at least a half-dozen C-suite level executives who made the leap from big pharma to lesser-known startup or biotech companies, it’s very clear that there is something deep down in their personalities that propelled them to make the move. Some of them were at the top of thei...

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Apr 06, 2018

The entire pharmaceutical industry has been booming, from the manufacturing of clinical trial materials to support research studies to the regulated medicines on the pharmacy shelves. It has been one of the top industry performers of the past three decades. By maintaining the highest safety and qual...

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Apr 03, 2018

Just when you think you’ve heard everything, news comes out of New York that a certain democratic member of city council wants to make vaping and walking on sidewalks illegal. The actual bill is currently geared towards making smoking illegal, but one can safely assume that vaping will also be...

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Mar 28, 2018

A new integrated ocean freight program for pharmaceuticals aims at a new approach to pharma-logistics fulfillment. The Posiedon project seeks to harness the collective knowledge of the supply chain to drive innovation, efficiencies, and safety and save money. “It’s the difference between...

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Mar 23, 2018

In January I published, “Can JPM And BTS Make A Bigger Difference?” This was part one of a four-part blog series on my experience of attending this year’s J.P. Morgan Healthcare (JPM) and Biotech Showcase (BTS) conferences in San Francisco. In this particular blog, I wrote about th...

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Mar 21, 2018

Bayer has already shown more than a passing interest in artificial intelligence through its digital accelerator programme Grants4Apps, but the company’s use of the technology looks to be more wide-ranging and deep-seated than that. Talking to journalists after the company’s Financial New...

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Feb 26, 2018

Matt Lowe, pharma agency veteran and founder (just this week) of healthtech agency performance.io, believes that such a company, relying heavily on search and performance marketing, may be a possiblity in the next few years (albeit once somebody has the courage to take the leap). I spoke to Lowe abo...

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Jan 25, 2018

Originally projected to be on the market by 2020, excitement about the contact lens to measure glucose levels from Novartis and Google has waned. Why? In 2016, smart wearables growth was steady but a recent study predicts that the market will pick up this year introducing innovative products to the ...

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Jan 24, 2018

A Swedish investor is pressing the world’s biggest drug companies to be transparent about their supply chains, after it alleged that some suppliers to those firms were dumping toxic waste into the environment. Nordea Asset Management, the investment arm of the Nordic region’s largest ban...

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Jan 24, 2018

Antibiotics are becoming ineffective at an alarming rate due to our misuse in healthcare, animals, and crops. Antibiotic resistance is responsible for 700,000 deaths each year, which is expected to continue rising – overtaking cancer by 2050. To slow this trend, we must start to use these drug...

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Jan 23, 2018

An independent analysis of pharmaceutical industry efforts to tackle drug resistance finds that, as well as developing new drugs, companies are also dismantling the incentives that encourage sales staff to oversell antibiotics, setting limits on the concentration of antibiotics in factory wastewater...

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Jan 19, 2018

This story from the New York Times got a lot of attention yesterday, and understandably so. It’s fundamentally about the shortage of some generic drugs, a problem that’s been with us for some years now in one form or another. My own belief is that much of this is a regulatory problem, an...

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Jan 16, 2018

CAR-T therapy has been hailed as a cure for cancer, but what really is this “miraculous technology” and what can we actually expect from it? The field of immuno-oncology is booming with billions of euros in investment. The ability to rewire our own immune system to fight cancer has certa...

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Jan 16, 2018

Christine M. V. Moore, Ph.D., Global Head and Executive Director, Merck & Co-led “Changes in the Regulatory Landscape,” an education session held 31 October during the 2017 ISPE Annual Meeting & Expo. The first speaker, Ellen F. Morrison, Assistant Commissioner of Medical Product...

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Jan 04, 2018

If we look at Aerie Pharmaceuticals and their new products Rhopressa and Roclatan, these are designed to reduce elevated intraocular pressure (IOP), the cause of vision loss in open-angle glaucoma. This is the largest prescription market in ophthalmology and it’s amazing to see such a breakthr...

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Jan 04, 2018

For centuries, modern medicine has grappled with the problem of finding the right drug treatment for the correct disease. While incremental progress is made every year, the lag time and expense of bringing a drug successfully to market have frustrated doctors, scientists, and patients. In search of ...

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Dec 11, 2017

The Society of Critical Care Medicine (SCCM) is committed to “Right Care, Right Now.”As part of this commitment, SCCM identifies patient care needs that require evidence-based best practice guidelines and works with experts to advance practices. Earlier this year, we published” Cli...

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Dec 04, 2017

Looking to social media influencers for advice makes sense when you’re shopping for fashionable jeans, your next great vacation, or even inspiration for your fitness regime. Most retail brands agree. According to the research firm L2 Gartner, 70% of retail brands are working with influencers t...

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Nov 30, 2017

Pharma depends on innovation, which is why it turns to biotech as the powerhouse of novel technologies. About 65% of recently drugs come from small life sciences companies according to a report from HBM Partners.

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Nov 22, 2017

Galapagos is a clinical-stage biotech developing small molecule medicines for a range of indications. It partnered up with the global pharma company, AbbVie, back in 2013, to develop a number of cystic fibrosis (CF) candidates for a combination therapy.

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Nov 17, 2017

Drug developers can’t take an adult clinical trial protocol and simply retool it for pediatrics. Yet, in my work at a pediatric clinical research organization (CRO), I frequently see sponsors attempt to do just that. Successfully implementing a pediatric drug development plan poses challenges ...

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Nov 15, 2017

There has been a huge push in policy circles to speed innovation in medicine which is manifest in several initiatives, including most notably the 21st Century Cures Act implementation. But it would be a mistake to assess the quickening pace of innovation solely through the lens of policy.

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Nov 14, 2017

Patient engagement has all the intentions to improve the ability of every patient to create meaningful and solid relationships with their healthcare providers. When patients can have meaningful relationships with their healthcare providers, this will create the way for them to participate actively w...

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Nov 14, 2017

We are living in a digital age, and this results in more patients being less depending on their health care providers for advice and information. More patients are now able to take more control of their lives and their health.

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Nov 10, 2017

Governments are swamping Purdue Pharma, makers of OxyContin, with opioid lawsuits alleging the company is responsible for the costs of opioid overdose.The continuing wave of opioid lawsuits coming at the makers of OxyContin, Purdue Pharma, based in Stamford, Connecticut, is growing. Recently, 28 Wis...

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Nov 01, 2017

Earlier this year, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced its Drug Competition Action Plan, which aims to bring more competition to the drug market and improve consumer access to drugs. As part of this effort, the Agency is focusing on ways to help bring complex generic drugs to marke...

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Nov 01, 2017

When we think of the challenges of space travel, we tend to focus on the technological aspects involving the difficulty of launch and landing, the structural integrity of the spacecraft and the basic safety of the astronauts.

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Oct 31, 2017

Amazon just announced a new program that would allow delivery people into a person’s house. While this may help solve the problem of items being stolen off people’s porches and could make delivery of items that require signatures such as iPhones easier, it may also be another piece to Am...

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Sep 11, 2017

Current estimates suggest that as many as 235 million people worldwide have asthma and over 200 million people have the chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). With rates set to increase, the need for efficacious medications for these incurable diseases is a major focus for research.

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Sep 01, 2017

According to the OECD, counterfeit medicines are responsible for more than 700,000 deaths annually. Up to 30% of all medicines are estimated to be fake in emerging and developing countries, says the World Health Organization (WHO). While fake drugs are potentially lethal, parallel markets and counte...

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Aug 07, 2017

Brands that have successfully managed adverse events in social media have one thing in common: all have buy-in from their pharmacovigilance (PV) team. Below is a primer that all pharma marketers need to know about working with PV – and how to make the most of this crucial partnership.

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Jul 21, 2017

In every facet of life, the concept of value is at play. Individuals make their own assessment of value and that shapes a host of decisions from what to buy and where to buy it. For drugs, the difference is often that the individual needs to rely on someone else’s assessment.

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Jul 10, 2017

Article 117 of the Medical Devices Regulation (MDR) (Regulation (EU) 2017/745) amends the Directive on medicinal products for human use (MPD) (Directive 2001/83/EC). This will significantly affect pharmaceutical manufacturers supplying drug delivery devices in combination with their medicinal produc...

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Jul 06, 2017

After delivery at a maternity and nursing home in Borivali, Mumbai, the patient’s husband was handed over a prescription by the doctor. The three medicines prescribed happened to be of a little-known Nagpur based pharma company and were priced much higher than the same ones produced by reputed...

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Jun 27, 2017

The White House recently launched a task force aimed at addressing the nation’s opioid addiction crisis, headed by New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie.1 According to the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, the majority of drug overdose deaths that occur today involve an opioid. Prescrip...

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Jun 07, 2017

HRA Pharma has launched its emergency contraceptive brand on social media, setting up new UK-focused channels on for ellaOne on Facebook and Twitter. The Paris-headquartered pharma company hopes the move will help it ‘address the need for accurate online information’, while also breaking...

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May 30, 2017

Counterfeit drugs entering the European supply chain pose a significant health and safety threat to patients. Furthermore, the European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO) estimates that the legitimate industry loses approximately €10 billion of revenue annually due to the presence of counter...

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Apr 24, 2017

Antibody-drug conjugates (ADCs), a humanized monoclonal antibody (mAb) conjugated with highly cytotoxic small molecules through chemical linkers, is an emerging technology used in cancer chemotherapy. ADC-based cytotoxic agents have shown vastly superior therapeutic applications compared to their fr...

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Sep 02, 2016

One of the areas of greatest concern for pharmacy practice, in terms of both cost and impact on patient care, is the increasing development of pharmaceuticals that could be classified as “specialty.” While there is no universally accepted definition of a specialty drug, most characteriza...

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Jun 17, 2012

A perfect storm is brewing in pharma M&A. Reduced R&D productivity, comparative advantages of large pharma companies, and the Trump Administration’s tax cuts make M&A more attractive than usual for an already acquisitive industry. To navigate these waters, pharma giants must embrac...

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Today the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine released its report Making Medicines Affordable: A National Imperative. The charge of the committee was to “address drug price trends, improve patient access to affordable and effective treatments, and encourage innovations th...

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The Netherlands’ new Health Minister has hit out at “absurd” drug prices, suggesting that the use of compulsory patent licensing might be one solution. This comes shortly after Germany’s highest court upheld a landmark decision forcing a life sciences innovator to license a k...

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Researchers are investigating how cancer cell growth can be curbed by disrupting their access to certain nutrients. Because our normal, healthy cells rely on the 24-hour cycle of our body to regulate the production of nutrients, the scientists were able to exploit that system and use it against glio...

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“The Feds Are Starting to Dig In at the Biggest Middle-Man in the Pharmaceutical Game,” that describes how Express Scripts is being investigated by two separate districts from the Department of Justice and the U.S. Attorney’s Office: New York and Massachusetts.

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“Express Scripts Urges Narrower Coverage of Anti-Inflammatory Drugs,” that describes the steps Express Scripts is taking to reduce the cost of expensive specialty pharmacy medications like Humira and Enbrel. These two drugs are injection medications that are part of a class called TNF Al...

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“Merck’s Head Defends Drug Prices,” ran The New York Times headline. The Times was reporting on the Merck & Co. president’s testimony at the previous day’s Senate hearing, part of a high-profile investigation into the price-setting activities of the US pharmaceutica...