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 [...]

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 [...]

Starting Uphill

Start up companies face a tough go- converting a new technology into saleable products on minimal funding- and those aiming at products for global health have even a harder challenge by swimming against the conventional wisdom that a highly-priced, reimbursable product is the only way to profitability.  But one piece to solving the currently intractable [...]

Pharma, Reinvent Thyself

Assertions that the pharmaceutical industry’s business model is broken are not new (e.g., “Rebuilding Big Pharma’s Business Model” by Bain and Co. smarties published in In Vivo, Bain article 2003) and certainly it is well established that productivity (new drugs launched) has dropped off significantly while costs have increased (e.g., Munos 2010 which I cited [...]

Access to Medicines/Access to Markets

When I attended BIO 2010, Biotechnology Industry Organization’s annual gabfest with 15,000 others in Chicago May 3-6 (BIO 2010), I was disappointed at not being able to attend a special session on May 5.  The Clinton Health Access Initiative (CHAI), represented by Inder Singh, their director of drug access, and BIO Ventures for Global Health [...]

BIO Break

I put my 2010 corporate earnings into negative territory this week by attending the world’s largest confab of biotech and pharmaceutical companies- the Bio Industry Organization’s BIO 2010, held May 2-6, at McCormick Place Convention Center, Chicago, IL (BIO 2010).  I am guessing that there are more than 15,000 attendees here, representing about every aspect [...]

A New Deal Against TB

Along with HIV/AIDS and malaria, tuberculosis (TB) is one of the Big Three of global health diseases, which due to their prevalence, consequence, and predilection for developing resistance to drugs are the focus of international prevention and treatment efforts.  TB is caused by a hardy type of bacteria, Mycobacterium tuberculosis, which can infect and kill [...]

Exertion Toward a Common Object

“I have often admired the extreme skill with which the inhabitants of the United States succeed in proposing a common object for the exertions of a great many men and in inducing them voluntarily to pursue it.”  Alexis de Tocqueville, On Democracy in America (On Democracy). Back in the day, the ever-quotable Alexis noted the [...]

SEAMs Right

Clearly an important part of the solving the global health crisis is a sustainable delivery system for basic medicines. Outside of public hospitals and clinics, many of the world’s citizens’ depend on street-front shops with limited quantities of sometimes expired or even counterfeit drugs and untrained staff.  Although through a concerted international effort to strengthen [...]

Peloton Partnering: A Friend for FRIND

In 2008, Dr. Paul L. Herrling, Head of Corporate Research at Novartis and Chairman of the Board of the Novartis Institute for Tropical Diseases (NITD), proposed a plan to fund and manage the development treatments for the neglected diseases.  His plan, called the Fund for R&D in Neglected Diseases (FRIND) (published in Global Forum Update [...]