Industry news

The price is right? Making the case for innovation

Fierce Biotech

The headlines always create a stir. A new drug is coming to market with a price tag over $100,000. For consumers, it’s sticker shock. For health plans, an expensive product they weren’t expecting to cover. For skeptical legislators, evidence of an industry in need of tougher pricing controls.

The top companies in med tech: 2015 revenue results

Stacy Lawrence / Fierce Medical Device

Med tech companies have found only one reliable way to boost sales--that's to buy them. The only players with sizable sales increases last year were driven by major acquisitions, according to data from Evaluate Medtech.* In fact, only two of the 10 companies as ranked by medical device and diagnostics sales actually had positive sales growth without an acquisition.

State-backed German startup investment vehicle plans new €300M fund

Nick Paul Taylor / Fierce Biotech

High-Tech Gründerfonds (HTGF), a seed investor backed by the German government, has revealed plans to raise €300 million ($341 million) for its third fund. The money is intended to enable HTGF to continue the startup-backing remit that has already seen it help 440 companies get off the ground.

Barriers to value-based drug pricing still abound

Michael Fitzhugh / BioWorld

America's journey into the tricky landscape of value-based health care, pioneered by hospitals and insurers, continues to beckon drugmakers to get onboard. But logistical difficulties and open questions around who benefits from the approach are slowing its march, panelists said during a session on the subject at the BIO International Convention.

Election year politics a wild card as biopharma weighs financing climate

Marie Powers / BioWorld

The crossover party is all but over. Pure public players have moved upstream. Companies that went public as recently as 2014 are going belly-up. And a hyperbolic presidential election campaign has turned the industry's life-saving mission into a source of public controversy.

Siberians develop advanced neurosurgery monitoring system

Marchmont Innovation News

A collaborative team of scientists from several Siberian research institutes has come up with a new monitoring system for neurosurgery. The developers claim it’s “unparalleled in the world,” portal Russian Science  reported . 

Experimental 'universal’ cancer vaccine tested in early trial

Eric Sagonowsky / Fierce Pharma

Despite years of noted failures and struggles in the field, groups are pushing on in cancer vaccines with a variety of approaches. In new work published in Nature, a team claims it may have the beginnings of what could become a “universal” cancer vaccine.

Is the world ready for connected health? Philips study aims to find out

Stacy Lawrence / Fierce Medical Device

Royal Philips ($PHG) is betting the farm on HealthTech, committing to a company transformation a few years ago to embrace the transformation of consumer and institutional healthcare through new technologies. But now it's asking the question--are we really ready for all that?

New rapid virus identification method developed in Siberia

Marchmont Innovation News

Researchers at the Novosibirsk-based Rzhanov Institute of Semiconductor Physics in Siberia have come up with a technique enabling very fast identification of hepatitis and other viruses. The new diagnostics method will be used in lab research. 

HIV drug development under way, gets Skolkovo support

Marchmont Innovation News

Viriom, a biomedical developer and asset of the ChemRar High Tech Center in Khimki outside Moscow, has been working on Russia’s first HIV solution which is expected to go beyond import substitution—an across-the-board goal the Russians have been pursuing in many sectors since the current crisis and western sanctions began—and offer “high potential for international commercialization.”