Latest Biotechnology, Pharmaceutical and Healthcare News from The Big Red Biotech Blog

Innovation as Illustrated by Beer

It's not often that you get a blog post that talks to innovation and uses references to both Homer Simpson and beer to drive home its point. Today's award goes to the Innovate on Purpose blog for -- well -- bringing us this innovation in writing. The...

Global Biosimilar Market Report 2013

Visiongain published a new report on the global biosimilar market in 2013 and says the market size will reach $2.45 B, or approximately 20% higher than last year. Biosimilars now account for about 2% of the biologics market. PharmTech Talk » Global...

The Outcomes Era

Here's another post on the importance of "outcomes" research in gaining acceptance for a new drug. It quotes results from a new Camelot Management Consultants study -- where 60% of US and European companies agree outcomes research to show the effecti...

Latest Myriad Case Commentary

I like to keep info flowing on the Myriad ("gene patent") case as it percolates through the Supreme's toward a final decision. This from Patent Docs blog yesterday summarizes some findings in a recent Nature Biotechnology paper as to the impact on ex...

Pharma Need for Adapting to Change

When I was a youngster, my father used to ask us kids in the family a question: Why did the dinosaurs go extinct? It was an interesting question to us as we all loved dinosaurs and knew a lot about them. Not long after the question was posed, possibl...

US Drug Market Contracts for First Time - EVER!

As Fierce Biotech reports via IMS data, te US drug market shrunk by 1% in 2012. This is the first time that has ever happened. This is due, of course, to the much talked about patent cliff arriving in a big way -- mpacting market share and revenues o...

R&D Spending may not be ALL Bad

Fierce Biotech yesterday reported that R&D spending was up as many significant biotechs -- like Gilead, Amgen, Celgene, Shire, Regeneron, Onyx and Biomarin. In other words, many of the darlings of biotech investors -- companies who have experienced s...

Myriad BRCA Test Cost is In-Line

This post from Patent Docs blog is self-explanatory. Suffice it to say that any hoo-haw over the exhorbitant price of a BRCA diagnostic test at $3000 is -- shall we say overblown. Assertions of this sort couldn't be more wrong-headed. If you want to...

Myriad BRCA Test Cost are In-Line

This post from Patent Docs blog is self-explanatory. Suffice it to say that any hoo-haw over the exhorbitant price of a BRCA diagnostic test at $3000 is -- shall we say overblown. Assertions of this sort couldn't be more wrong-headed. If you want to...

Pharma vs Society - Let's Get Ready to Stuuuummmbbble!

Both In the Pipeline and PharmaGossip today recounted cooments by Bernard Munos in Forbes on the state of pharmaceutical industry. To wit, drugs cost too much to create and the R&D return is lousy and unsustainable. Plus all the new drugs, e.g. cance...

Biotech Needs to Focus on Demonstrating Product Value

According to a recent Ernst & Young study, future success in launching and selling new drugs will increasing depend upon the Company's ability to "show value" for its product -- i.e. comparative effectiveness. This recognizes the increasing reality t...

M&A Activity - Usual Suspects

Fierce Biotech reports on latest Moody analyst's take on M&A activity for 2013 in the pharma industry. The news was similar to predictions that I've seen for the past couple of years -- that being a few cash flush Big Pharma players will be looking f...

Supremes Hear Oral Arguments in Myriad v. AMP? Or do they?

I've written about this before, but wouldn't it be nice if the arguments presented before the Supreme court in a potentially pivotal patent eligibility definition case like Myriad, actually contained discussions of science to illustrate the Law? We'r...

VC Deals - especially Life Science - Have BAD 1st Quarter

New reports from PricewaterhouseCooper (MoneyTree Report) and National Venture Capital Association (Reuters data) show that VC investment in Qtr 1 2013 dropped 12% by dollars and 15% by number of deals as compared to Qtr 4 2012. In a Qtr over Qtr com...

Liquid versus Powder Media Choice in Production

I like to recognize when a colleague's work gets good coverage in scientific or trade journals. My kudos go out to Joanna Hudson this time for her article "Choosing Liquid or Powedered Media" in April's issue of BioProcess International, page 18. As...

Obama Budget May Cause Big Pharma to Take Its Own Pain Meds

PharmaTech Talk reports what's in the new FY 2014 budget proposal that's in favor of Big Pharma? Not much apparently. First off, it appears FDA will be losing more money for drug oversight. Any added resources they will get will have to come from pha...

Surprise! Surprise! Big Biotech's Outdo Big Pharma on Several Measures

As reported in Fierce Biotech, Burrill & Co did an analysis comparing biotechs to pharma over the past 3 years. Biotechs emerged as the winner on several key measures. Companies in the Big Pharma camp included J&J, Pfizer, Novartis, Merck, Roche, San...

Top 10 Companies for New Drug Approvals Over Past 10 Years

Fierce Biotech via Mathew Herper's column in Forbes, reports that J&J had the most drug approvals in the 10 year period ending in 2012. This is one measure of R&D pipeline success (personally I'd like to see the amount of revenue generated from these...

PBS Newshour Covers Myriad v. AMP Oral Arguments with The Supremes

Here's video of from the PBS Newshour discussing the oral arguments presented before the Supreme court yesterday in the Myriad v. AMP "gene patent" case. The link to the newshour comes courtesy of the Patent Doc blog -- authored by Kevin Noonan -- wh...

Good Gene Patent Discussion

I'm a regular reader of the Patent Docs blog written by patent attorneys Kevin Noonan and Donald Zuhn. In a series of blogs this week, there was a good discussion of an article from the recent issue of Genome Medicine. The thrust of the article was t...

Biosimilar State Legislation Score Card

The Pharmalot blog is doing a good job keeping us up to date on the legislative efforts of various States to put forth regulations on the interchangeability of biosimilars --- assuming any ever get approved by FDA in our lifetime. Maryland is the lat...

Just Back from Final Four

I just returned from an exciting trip to Atlanta to see the Final Four. Unfortunately, my Orangemen didn't win but all 3 games were very competitive, the people were nice, and I had a wonderful time. I even fit in a Braves-Cubs game on the off-day Su...

Biotech Top 10 Revenue Stragglers

Fierce Biotech today published the top 10 new drugs with sales that lag the analysts' bullish pre-launch estimates. This ranking was based on drugs launched in the past 5 years that had been projected to earn blockbuster status. Unfortunately, thus f...

Lonza Reaffirms Its Biosimilar Path

Lonza clarified its reported position, inPharma Technologist, with regard to its joint venture with Teva. A recent interview with Lonza's CEO had led writers to imply that Lonza was rethinking its position on biosimilars -- and presumably its JV with...

Can't See the Forest for the Elephants

This from today's Innovate on Purpose blog. It talks about why customers can fail to innovate due to limited perspective and personal bias. it counsels that to truly innovate you need to really get to know potential customers and their needs. In fact...