Crossing My Desk

I noted a number of news items over the past couple weeks that I thought are relevant to the business of global health and worth noting.  Here is what caught my attention: “A serious flaw in the imagined future of oncology” The imagined future of personalized cancer therapy hit a speed bump recently when a [...]

Hunting the Elusive Snark

I was surprised, and a bit disquieted, when I was notified in late December by the program committee that my proposal for a panel in the upcoming Bioindustry Organization (BIO) International Convention had been accepted.  I have attended the BIO confab in the past during my employed years and more recently under my own banner, [...]

Putting the Biz into BoP

Overshadowed by the Uniting to Combat NTDs announcement made last week in London (see my post of 2/1/12 and Combat NTDs) was the release of a report on how private sector companies and grant-supported organizations have addressed and can address the need for medicines in bottom-of-the-pyramid (BoP) markets.  “Bringing Medicines to Low Income Markets:  A [...]

Made in China

Back in June, the government of China issued its 12th five-year, $300 billion plan for science and technology spending and included “biopharmacy, bio-engineering, bio-agriculture, and biomanufacturing” as priorities (China Daily).  Of course, the announcement caught the attention of many who follow the biotech industry and prompted several dire commentaries.  David Duncan of Forbes wrote “Will [...]

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 [...]

Drug Bust

A couple weeks ago I noted that a major summer story was the growing shortage of lower-margin, off-patent but still medically important drugs, particularly several that are the mainstays of cancer chemotherapy (my post of 9/8/11, “Market Failure in the US”).  And it was reported this week that the shortage of the latter is not [...]

Biosimilar Fever

Last week, I wrote about the moves of the big pharma multinational companies (MNCs) to increase their presence in the global drug market with “branded generic” drugs (that is, not patent-protected but sold by an MNC with the implication of higher quality).  I wondered if the MNCs were also aiming at the public sector market, [...]

Generics Play

Generic drugs, once dismissed as inferior “copy-cats” by the mainstream pharma companies, are now an important part of the industry’s future.  For the past five years, the share of $400 billion world drug sales attributed to generic drugs has increased at a 10% annual rate and is predicted to increase to a 28% share by [...]

Market Failure in the US

One of the big health care stories over the summer was the growing shortages of generic cancer drugs.  While I did not read that the shortages resulted in any deaths, the treatment protocols of some patients were changed to use alternative and possibly less effective drugs or were delayed, creating much anxiety (see Boston Globe [...]

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 [...]