Industry news

China FDA logs more than 320,000 device adverse medical reports in 2015

EJ Lane / FeircePharmaAsia

China FDA has released an updated tally of adverse event reporting for medical devices that found more than 320,000 incidents were noted in 2015 with 80% from users of medical equipment. A separate report linked 184 deaths to incidents involving devices.

New medicines targeting age-related macular degeneration

Peter Winter / BioWorld

Significant progress has been made in ophthalmology, with biopharma companies working on innovative treatments for sight-threatening diseases. As the research accelerates, promising gene therapy, stem cell-based and biopharmaceutical product candidates have progressed into clinical trials. Those innovative next-generation therapies will be welcomed as millions of people around the world suffer from blinding retinal degenerative diseases.

Cost of mental illness underscores need for new treatments

PhRMA

According to a new Health Affairs study, the treatment of mental health disorders cost $201 billion in 2013 – more than any other medical condition in the U.S. health system, including heart conditions, trauma and cancer. While not among the fastest-growing medical conditions, with a growth rate of 5.6 percent compared to the top growing conditions which had an average growth rate of 10 percent, mental health disorders accounted for $38 billion in excess dollars spent, the highest of the medical conditions assessed in the study.

NIH study visualizes proteins involved in cancer cell metabolism

U.S. National Institute of Health

Scientists using a technology called cryo-EM (cryo-electron microscopy) have broken through a technological barrier in visualizing proteins with an approach that may have an impact on drug discovery and development. They were able to capture images of glutamate dehydrogenase, an enzyme found in cells, at a resolution of 1.8 angstroms, a level of detail at which the structure of the central parts of the enzyme could be visualized in atomic detail. 

BD pharma execs make pitches; VC money sits as valuations climb

Karen Pihl-Carey / BioWorld

Snapping smartphone pictures of pharmaceutical company slides, entrepreneurs listened intently last week in a packed audience attending 15-minute presentations of business development executives looking for innovative products, not only in the Asia-Pacific region, but globally.

China gets ready for immunotherapy future despite uncertainty

Shannon Ellis / BioWorld

At the Chinabio Partnering Forum, a panel of leading Chinese biopharma founders and executives discussed the future of immuno-oncology in China to a packed room in Suzhou, a biotech hub a short distance from Shanghai. The speakers were cautiously optimistic about China’s future in this hot new category of cancer treatment, artfully skirting around direct mention of the government’s recent ban on immunotherapy following a scandal involving a patient who died after receiving DC-CIK treatment.

How Wellcome and Gates charities profit from helping biotech

Ben Hirschler / Reuters

The Wellcome Trust medical charity is to profit from U.S. approval of a new diagnostic cancer test, the first commercial product funded by the organization since the sale of its pharmaceuticals business to Glaxo in 1995.

New incentives needed to develop antibiotics to fight superbugs

Bill Berkrot / Reuters

Drugmakers are renewing efforts to develop medicines to fight emerging antibiotic-resistant bacteria, but creating new classes of drugs on the scale needed is unlikely to happen without new financial incentives to make the effort worth the investment, companies and industry experts said.

China regulator to launch drug pricing probe in June

Adam Jourdanr / Reuters

China will carry out wide-ranging pricing inspections on drug firms, hospitals and procurement bodies from June 1, the country's top watchdog said on Friday, extending a tough cost-cutting campaign to reduce the price of healthcare.

MIT makes continuous manufacturing unit small enough to fit in a pharmacy

Eric Palmer / FeircePharma

More and more drugmakers are giving continuous manufacturing a try, seeing it as the future in small molecule drug production, in part, because the plants for the process are much smaller than those for batch processing. Now, scientists at MIT have a prototype of a continuous manufacturing device so small it might be used by pharmacies to produce their own generic drugs.