Industry news

Risks abated, not gone as VCs dive back into cell, gene therapies

Nuala Moran / BioWorld

It has taken many years of painstaking research, largely conducted in academic labs, but there is now a palpable sense that cell and gene therapies have reached a tipping point. A growing volume of early stage data indicates those products do – as promised – deliver unprecedented clinical benefit.

Shortages, shifts in sterile injectable market lead some prices to soar

Eric Palmer / FeircePharmaManufactoring

Last month, four U.S. senators asked the FTC to investigate "possible illegal collusion" by saline solution manufacturers to determine whether they had been unfairly cashing in on a two-year shortage. But saline is only one of hundreds of hospital generic injectable drugs whose prices have soared in the last 8 years, And given the current state of affairs in the business, it is a situation unlikely to change.

Report Finds Skills Gap in UK Biopharmaceutical Industry

BioPharm International

A report from the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry (ABPI) has found that pharmaceutical companies are struggling to recruit for high-skilled roles in the UK due to low numbers of good quality candidates, ABPI said in a Nov. 11, 2015 press release. The report, “Bridging the Skills Gap in the Biopharmaceutical Industry,” looks at the skills needed now and in the near future for the biopharmaceutical industry to thrive in the UK. Based on research from 93 industry leaders from 59 organizations, the report reveals that the most concerning skills gaps are in the interdisciplinary areas involving mathematics and biology, which are essential for the development of the personalized medicines of the future.

Silicon Valley VC shop Andreessen Horowitz sets up $200M bio fund

Nick Paul Taylor / Fierce Biotech

Andreessen Horowitz is joining the rush of Silicon Valley investors looking for gold in biotech. The renowned VC shop has rounded up $200 million, poached a professor from Stanford University and given him a brief to ferret out the hottest startups at the intersection of software and biotech.

Biopharmas (mostly) meet mandatory trial reporting but fall flat voluntarily

Marie Powers / BioWorld

The decade-old drumbeat for clinical trials transparency grew louder with release of a paper in BMJ Open about the dearth of voluntary data reporting – sometimes even from late-stage trials – on drugs that were subsequently approved.

Broken Market for Old Drugs Means Price Spikes Are Here to Stay

Cynthia Koons, Robert Langreth / Bloomberg Business

With most products, you’d expect a flood of new supply to quickly drive back down a price spike caused by a temporary shortage. Not so in the topsy-turvy world of hospital pharmaceuticals.

Cancer Cell-Therapy Companies Scale Up in Race to Lower Costs

Makiko Kitamura / Bloomberg Business

For companies racing to develop cell therapies for cancer, building up production capacity while bringing down the cost of new drugmaking processes is a top priority alongside clinical testing.

NIH-led effort details global brain disorders research agenda in Nature supplement

U.S. National Institute of Health

Infants are starved of oxygen during difficult births. Children’s cognitive function is permanently damaged due to malnutrition or exposure to infections or toxins. Adults suffer from crippling depression or dementia. The breadth and complexity of these and other brain and nervous system disorders make them some of the most difficult conditions to diagnose and treat, especially in the developing world, where there are few resources. 

IMS Health Forecasts Global Drug Spending to Increase 30 Percent by 2020, to $1.4 Trillion, As Medicine Use Gap Narrows

IMS HEalth

More than half of the world’s population will live in countries where medicine use will exceed one dose per person per day by 2020, up from 31 percent in 2005, as the “medicine use gap” between developed and pharmerging markets narrows. According to new research released today by the IMS Institute for Healthcare Informatics, total spending on medicines will reach $1.4 trillion by 2020 due to greater patient access to chronic disease treatments and breakthrough innovations in drug therapies. Global spending is forecast to grow at a 4-7 percent compound annual rate over the next five years.

FDA calls for beefed-up oversight of lab-developed tests

Emily Wasserman / FierceMedicalDevices

The FDA is calling for more oversight of lab-developed tests (LDTs) in the wake of a congressional hearing about the agency's ability to regulate the products, pointing to a new internal report that says certain LDTs "may have caused or have caused" harm to patients by producing incorrect results.