Virtual Reality Biotech

Back in July 2011, I wrote about a type of “virtual” biotech company that is formed to focus on a single product and use minimal financing to generate sufficient data to validate the drug and attract an acquirer  and whether this model could be used to commercialize products for the neglected, global diseases (“Backyard Biotech” [...]

Orphaned and Neglected

Big pharma’s enthusiasm for rare and orphan disease (ROD) drug development is paying off, at least in new drug approvals.  As reported last month by Yahoo Finance (Yahoo article), 11 of the 37 of the drugs approved in 2011 by the US FDA were for rare diseases.  As noted in the article, companies now believe [...]

Revenge of the Microbes II

This past spring I wrote a post about the increase in the volume in public, governmental, medical, and industrial voices on the challenge of microbial resistance to the current drug arsenal (“Revenge of the Microbes,” 4/21/11).  As is pretty well known, the rates of occurrence of multi-drug resistant infections by microbes (aka “super bugs” that [...]

A Long Strange Trip

A couple weeks ago, Ranbaxy Laboratories Ltd. of Gurgaon, India (Ranbaxy) reported that it had received marketing approval in India for an new anti-malaria drug, a combination of arterolane maleate and piperaquine phosphate (Fierce Biotech article and Economic Times article).  The announcement was notable because Ranbaxy is a fifty-year-old generic drug maker (and since 2008 [...]

Verify Then Trust

One concept for accelerating the development of drugs for neglected diseases (i.e., those whose treatment is not reimbursed by insurance companies) is application of the “open source” innovation model in which distributed groups of researchers, mostly at academic laboratories, share tasks and pool information to advance drug discovery and development.  I have written about the [...]

Not So NICE

NICE is being not so nice to Big Pharma.  NICE is the UK’s National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence, an expert advisory committee to their National Health Service (NHS), and it “provides guidance, sets quality standards, and manages a national database to improve people’s health and prevent and treat ill health” (NICE).  One of [...]

Gone Fishin’

I’m interested in quick and low-cost ways to discover and develop drugs for treating ROW (rest-of-world) diseases.  I have posted on the “open source” approach in which publicly-financed institutions pool resources (not likely effectively, see “Open Source Sesame,” 3/3/11), on virtual biotech companies that leverage low overhead costs (see “Backyard Biotech,” 7/7/11), and on my [...]

Missing the Boat

Christoph Westphal is undoubtedly a smart guy, an MD and a successful Boston-based biotech entrepreneur, executive, and investor (see his Wikipedia entry, Westphal).  Recently in his spare time, he is writing commentaries for the Boston Globe editorial page and his most recent was “Innovation suffers with ill economy,” August 15, 2011 (Westphal editorial).  While it [...]

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 [...]

Skin in the Game

The recent announcement that the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation Therapeutics, Inc. (CFFT), and Vertex, the well-established biotech company, had extended their collaboration to find “correctors” of the genetic defect underlying cystic fibrosis (defective transmembrance conductance regulator proteins, Vertex press release) got me thinking about the need for better business development efforts by organizations developing treatments for [...]