BUSINESS INSIGHTS
Aptar Pharma and Fluidda | September 23, 2022
Nanopharm, an Aptar Pharma company and leader in contract research and development services for orally inhaled and nasal drug products announced an exclusive collaboration with Fluidda, a leader in the field of Functional Respiratory Imaging. The companies will leverage their respective proprietary technology platforms to help accelerate U.S. Food & Drug Administration approvals for orally inhaled generic products via the alternative bioequivalence pathway. Nanopharm was acquired by Aptar in 2019, as part of the company’s strategy to expand its services offerings and partner with pharmaceutical companies earlier in the drug development process.
Nanopharm has pioneered the development of the alternative bioequivalence regulatory pathway for U.S. FDA approval of generic OIDPs for Asthma and Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease using its proprietary in vitro and in silico service platform, SmartTrack™. Fluidda’s proprietary in silico platform FRI delivers quantitative predictions of regional drug deposition in disease state lungs using Computational Fluid Dynamics. The FRI platform provides critical information to help understand the availability and activity of the drug at the site of action in the lungs, when complemented by Nanopharm’s local lung physiologically-based pharmacokinetic model platform and its in vitro data.
This novel approach is intended to allow pharma companies to file Abbreviated New Drug Application dossiers without the need to perform time-consuming, costly and often unpredictable clinical end-point studies. Similarly, it can support 505(b)(2) filings, by derisking and abbreviating clinical studies.
“We are pleased to solidify our relationship with Fluidda and its world-leading FRI technology. A company would have to spend several years to achieve the current combined expertise and experience of Nanopharm and Fluidda. The collaboration between Nanopharm and Fluidda has the potential to revolutionize this arduous regulatory pathway,”
Dr. Jag Shur, Vice President, Science & Technology at Nanopharm
Having already worked together closely for a number of years, Nanopharm and Fluidda have gained a unique insight into the complex and continually evolving regulatory requirements. This exclusive collaboration deepens the relationship between Fluidda and Nanopharm, benefiting both patients and customers with an uncompromised and holistic approach in developing the scientific rationale to demonstrate bioequivalence using only in vitro and in silico methodologies. The first potential approval of an OIDP using the alternative bioequivalence approach is pending, and, when approved, will further validate Nanopharm’s SmartTrack™ as the go-to solution for alternative bioequivalence studies and should accelerate demand for the companies’ collective services.
With momentum building for the transition to new lower global warming potential (GWP) propellants for pMDIs, SmartTrack™ will also help companies to understand and modulate the impact of these new propellants on drug deposition and dissolution in the lungs, giving confidence in the performance of the reformulated product before embarking on any necessary clinical studies.
Dr. Jan de Backer, CEO of Fluidda, stated, “Fluidda has already demonstrated the applicability of its FRI platform to provide more objective data for evaluating and administering inhaled drug products accurately. Nanopharm’s unique SmartTrack™ platform provides us with clinically-relevant input data without having to actually go into the clinic, which really adds another level of confidence to the models, and provides an integrated perspective.”
Guillaume Brouet, Vice President, Analytical, Regulatory and Scientific Affairs at Aptar Pharma, commented, “Aptar Pharma is delighted to collaborate with Fluidda on this important development, which reinforces our mission to help customers derisk and accelerate their drug product development programs.”
About Aptar
Aptar Pharma is part of AptarGroup, Inc., a global leader in the design and manufacturing of a broad range of drug delivery, consumer product dispensing and active material science solutions and services. Aptar’s innovative solutions and services serve a variety of end markets including pharmaceutical, beauty, personal care, home care, food and beverage. Aptar Pharma’s analytical, laboratory and regulatory services add value at every stage of the drug development process, accelerating and de-risking the program along the way. Nanopharm, an Aptar Pharma company, is a leading provider of specialized analytical and product development services, with a focus on orally inhaled and nasal drug products. Aptar is headquartered in Crystal Lake, Illinois and has 13,000 dedicated employees in 20 countries.
About Fluidda
FLUIDDA, founded in 2005, is the world leader in the field of Functional Respiratory Imaging (FRI). This technique combines HRCT scans and Computational Fluid Dynamics technology (CFD), which offers vast improvements by making clinical trials shorter, faster and thus, more cost effective. FRI also helps patients and healthcare providers in offering a unique entry point in personalized medicine, by optimizing diagnosis, monitoring disease progression and the effects of therapy including accurate assessment of the deposition of inhalation medication. Fluidda’s mission is to optimize treatment pathways, reduce healthcare costs and to limit the go-to-market time of respiratory drugs, pulmonology medical devices and therapies. Fluidda has offices in Belgium, the United States and Portugal.
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BUSINESS INSIGHTS
Alira Health and Artisan Healthcare Consulting | September 07, 2022
Alira Health, a patient-centric, global health care advisory, clinical research and technology company, announced the acquisition of Artisan Healthcare Consulting, a US-based consulting firm that provides strategic insights to healthcare companies. Artisan serves 12 of the top 15 pharmaceutical companies in the US, supports the C-Suite of leading biotechnology companies, and has deep expertise in over 30 therapeutic areas.
The acquisition of Artisan strengthens and extends Alira Health’s Market Access and Management Consulting advisory practices in North America and globally. Clients of Alira Health and Artisan Healthcare Consulting now have access to the full breadth of advisory offerings from both firms. Alira Health clients can leverage Artisan’s deep expertise in brand strategy and analytics, new product differentiation, US market access, go-to-launch strategies, and product lifecycle management. Artisan Healthcare Consulting clients can benefit from Alira Health’s clinical operations, real-world evidence, and patient-centric technology offerings, including decentralized clinical trials (DCT), patient support programs (PSP) and digital therapeutics (DTx).
“Artisan Healthcare Consulting is recognized for delivering the highest level of strategic and quantitative analysis to help healthcare leaders act decisively across their business. Artisan Healthcare Consulting’s leadership has decades of experience serving as a long-term partner to healthcare executives. We welcome them to the Alira Health team.”
Jean-Francois Ricci, Chief Access Officer at Alira Health
“We are delighted to join a company with such a broad and complementary set of capabilities,” said Bob Delise, CEO and Founder of Artisan Healthcare Consulting. “It is a pleasure to work with our new colleagues, and we now have access to an international team of strategists and experts who can help our customers succeed. We embrace Alira Health’s mission to humanize healthcare and look forward to offering new capabilities to all our clients.”
Artisan Healthcare Consulting partners Bob Delise, Brad Ship, and Greg Wolfe will join Alira Health’s global consulting leadership team as they continue to work with their long-term clients.
About Artisan Healthcare Consulting, Inc.
Artisan Healthcare Consulting Inc. was founded in 2009 on the principle that outstanding client service differentiates a great consulting firm from a good one. Artisan provides strategic and analytic advice to a wide range of healthcare product companies. Artisan works across the biopharma industry to help clients steer emerging therapies through clinical development, launch them successfully, and drive success throughout the life cycle of their products.
About Alira Health
Alira Health is an international patient-centric, global health care advisory, clinical research, and technology company, whose mission is to humanize healthcare. We work with healthcare and life sciences organizations looking for support across their entire solutions lifecycle. From development to medical care, we complement our clients’ expertise with a full spectrum of services including research and clinical development solutions, technology-powered consulting, and real-world evidence.
Our integrated and multidisciplinary team of over 600 scientists, strategists, economists, clinicians, and biostatisticians collaborate across our North American, European, and Asian offices and advise 80% of the top 50% of MedTech companies and 75% of the top 50% of Pharma companies.
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PHARMA TECH
Servier Group and GNS | August 25, 2022
GNS, the leader in the use of "Digital Twins" and Causal AI & biosimulation technology for biopharmaceutical drug discovery and development, and Servier, a global pharmaceutical group, today announced a collaboration to advance drug discovery, translational, and clinical development efforts in Multiple Myeloma (MM).
"This collaboration furthers Servier's goal to accelerate its drug discovery and clinical development efforts through AI and biosimulation and other digital initiatives. We believe GNS' Digital Twin and unique causal AI models will help our research and early development group improve our understanding of MM disease biology and, ultimately, transform our drug discovery and clinical development process".
Claude Bertrand, EVP of Research and Development at Servier
"We are delighted to collaborate with Servier to help advance research in MM and leverage our Gemini Digital Twin models to help uncover novel insights and reveal the hidden biological circuity of this disease," said Joe Donahue, Chief Business Officer at GNS. "Working together with the outstanding Servier team, we hope to make a difference in the lives of patients with MM."
The collaboration will address key questions about how MM progresses in different patient subpopulations, including discovering what are the most synergistic pathways for new combination therapies and will help Servier gain insights that can advance their translational and clinical development efforts. This work will initially leverage the GNS Gemini Digital Twin for MM developed using the rich clinico-genomic data from the Multiple Myeloma Research Foundation CoMMpass study.
GNS' MM Digital Twin leverages the rich patient multi-modal data generated by MMRF to create a transparent, accurate, quantified representation of complex biological mechanisms, revealing new circuitry of human disease. By conducting biosimulations, which are essentially computational experiments, one can discover new drug targets and disease mechanisms, and can also determine which drug candidates are more effective than others and why certain molecular profiles of patients lead to better and more durable response. Ultimately, the MM Digital Twins will radically change how Pharma R&D is conducted by helping to accelerate the identification of new targets and target combinations, new biomarkers, and enabling the in silico design of better trials.
About Servier Group
Servier is a global pharmaceutical group governed by a Foundation. With a strong international presence in 150 countries and a total revenue of 4.7 billion euros in 2021, Servier employs 21,800 people worldwide. Servier is an independent group that invests over 20% of its brand-name revenue in Research and Development every year. To accelerate therapeutic innovation for the benefit of patients, the Group is committed to open and collaborative innovation with academic partners, pharmaceutical groups, and biotech companies. It also integrates the patient's voice at the heart of its activities.
A leader in cardiology, the ambition of the Servier Group is to become a renowned and innovative player in oncology. Its growth is based on a sustained commitment to cardiovascular and metabolic diseases, oncology, neuroscience and immuno-inflammatory diseases. To promote access to healthcare for all, the Servier Group also offers a range of quality generic drugs covering most pathologies.
About GNS
GNS is the leader in the application of Causal AI and simulation technology to discover and validate novel drug targets, simulate clinical trials, and help pharmaceutical and biotech companies discover and develop new medicines faster. GNS' patented AI uncovers new insights from multi-omics and real-world data leading to the discovery and prioritization of novel biological targets, and more efficient clinical trials with patients who are likely to respond to therapies. The Gemini Digital Twin models across oncology, auto-immune diseases, and neurology enable the simulation of disease progression and drug response at the individual patient level to simulate clinical trials in diverse patient cohorts.
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