Industry news

South Korea approved more clinical trials in 2015

Matthew Driskill / FiercePharmaAsia

South Korea's Ministry of Food and Drug Safety announced this week that a "significant number" of South Korean drugs were approved for Phase III trials in 2015.

New report celebrates a decade of progress in chronic diseases

Holly Campbell / PhRMA

In the last 10 years, incredible progress has been made by the biopharmaceutical industry in the treatment of chronic diseases. With about half of all Americans, or 117 million people, living with one or more chronic health conditions, this innovation is more critical than ever. Patients with chronic diseases are frequent users of medical care, accounting for 81 percent of hospital admissions and 76 percent of physician visits. 

Advancing the science for patients with rare diseases

Allyson Funk / PhRMA

When you have a loved one with a rare disease, the importance of persevering to find new, innovative treatments takes on new meaning. This year on Rare Disease Day, I am excited to celebrate the advances we saw in treatments last year and the hope we have for continued progress in the years ahead.

FDA challenges industry to improve reproducibility and accuracy of informatics pipelines

Nick Paul Taylor / Fierce Biotech

The FDA has set up the first challenge to use its cloud-based NGS data platform, precisionFDA. Officials at FDA have tasked participants with applying their informatics mapping and variant calling pipelines to well-characterized whole-genome sequencing read data sets, with a view to assessing performance in terms of accuracy and reproducibility.

29 February 2016

Clearside Biomedical, Inc. Announces Appointment of Richard J. Croarkin to the Board of Directors

Clearside Biomedical, Inc., a late-stage clinical biopharmaceutical company developing innovative first-in-class drug therapies to treat blinding diseases of the eye, today announced that Richard J. Croarkin has been appointed to Clearside’s Board of Directors. Mr. Croarkin is the former Senior Vice President of Finance, Chief Financial Officer & Corporate Strategy Officer of Alcon, Inc. and brings extensive global financial experience from working for diverse companies, including Nestlé Health Science S.A., Pepsico Incorporated and AMAX, Inc.

Drug manufacturing quality standards push on in India

Matthew Driskill / FiercePharmaAsia

Foreign regulators and domestic producers in India are stepping into the breach to help the country improve its quality-control standards that have been the target in recent months of warning letters and outright bans for manufacturing shortfalls and in some cases fraud.

Intel hops on the precision medicine bandwagon with new projects for 2016

Emily Wasserman / FierceMedicalDevices

Tech giant Intel ($INTC) is getting in on President Obama's Precision Medicine Initiative. The company is launching a new program to improve data analytics for genetic research, feeding into a swath of projects announced under the administration's latest precision medicine push.

China says to speed up approvals for some drugs

Alexandra Harney / Reuters

China's drug regulator said it would accelerate approvals of new medicines, long a headache for pharmaceutical firms who complain it takes too long to get drugs to market. The China Food and Drug Administration (CFDA) said in a statement published on Friday that it would prioritize the approval of drugs with clear clinical value, including those that use advanced technology or innovative methods.

American Cancer Society, Samsung launch breast cancer pilot to integrate care, info and support

Stacy Lawrence / Fierce Medical Devices

The American Cancer Society has partnered with Samsung and software startup Breezie to conduct a pilot program to offer breast cancer patients a single point of contact across their medical team, family and caregivers as well as to offer access to customized treatment and clinical trial information and an online support group.

The top 20 drugs in 2020--worldwide sales

Tracy Staton / Fierce Pharma

Forecasting drug sales is a tricky business; just ask any biopharma CEO who has overpromised and underdelivered. The people who make it their business know that very well, and they update their numbers with every big shift in the market and every surprise result from a key clinical trial.