BD Needy

BIO Ventures for Global Health (BVGH), an advocacy group now based in San Francisco, issued a report last week, “Developing New Drugs and Vaccine for Neglected Diseases of the Poor:  The Product Developer Landscape” (BVGH report).  As I have noted in previous posts on BVGH, I’m enthusiastic about the organization’s mission- to encourage the biotech [...]

Window Dressing

Last week on October 26, a new organization was launched that will accelerate the development of new treatments for global health, or so it was said.  With much fanfare (and a webcast), WIPO, the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), one of the 16 specialized agencies of the United Nations (whose hyperbolic tagline is “Encouraging Creativity [...]

USAID Rhetoric or Reality

I was not able to attend the Partnering for Global Health Forum on June 27, the third in a series organized by Bio Ventures for Global Health (BVGH) and held in conjunction with the big biotech-fest, BIO 2011, in Washington, DC.  The Forum has a laudable aim (“creating new market-based solutions that speed the development [...]

Checking the Pool’s Temperature

As my regular readers know, I have written several times on the concept of open source innovation for the discover and development of the products for neglected diseases (e.g., posts of 10/5/09, 8/5/10, 3/10/11) and about one of the more important efforts to make this concept reality:  the Pool for Open Innovation Against Neglected Tropical [...]

Nuts and Bolts

As many of you may know, one of the few conferences aimed at the business of global health is coming up on June 27.  BIO Ventures for Global Health (BVGH), the Biotechnology-Industry-Organization (BIO)-backed and now San Francisco-based group that advocates for the participation of the biotech/pharma industry in developing products for global health needs, is [...]

Bits and Bytes from the Info-stream

Since I’m traveling this week and don’t have regular access to a computer, I’m dipping into the info-stream to comment on a few items that have come to my attention recently and by-passing the hard work of a more thoughtful commentary.  Here goes: Costs of drug discovery:   I saw that a recent publication on this [...]

Beached

August has the reputation for being a slow month but with many of us squeezing in a vacation or in back-to-school mode it is more a matter of relativity.   Here in Beantown, the rental vans and cars with out-of-state plates clog the streets near the colleges, but at least the SUVs ferrying kids three blocks [...]