Industry news

Rivaling some BRIC countries, Middle East-North Africa region is a growing market

Mari Serebrov / BioWorld

MENA – the Middle East and North Africa. As a region, it's got everything a drugmaker could want. An expanding and aging population. Unmet medical need. A growing middle class. The desire and the ability to pay for branded and generic therapies.

FT counts 39 plants banned in India as regulatory woes mount for drugmakers

EJ Lane / FeircePharmaAsia

A hard drumbeat of U.S. FDA complaints against more than two dozen companies in India for quality violations has affected 39 drugmaking facilities, creating an avalanche of remedial work that could take years and is steadily driving up medicine costs in the United States.

11 September 2015

Briggs Morrison, CEO, Syndax Pharmaceuticals To Open ACRES Inaugural SYNERGY Event

Dr. Briggs Morrison, one of the world’s leading figures in drug development and immediate past Chairman of the Board of TransCelerate, an industry organization charged with improving the clinical trials process, will deliver the opening keynote address launching the Alliance for Clinical Research Excellence and Safety (ACRES) inaugural SYNERGY event to be held in Boston, October 1-2, 2015.

11 September 2015

New blood test helps detect cancer early

Gary Robbins / The San Diego Union-Tribune

A blood test that was scarcely heard of two years ago is quickly emerging as an alternative to the often painful practice of using needles or surgery to sample a patient’s tissues for signs of cancer. Scientists from San Diego to Boston said the new “liquid biopsies” can easily detect potentially harmful tumor cells and mutated DNA traveling through the blood stream.

The Ministry of Health reported a reduction in mortality of able-bodied population of Russia

Ru-facts.com

The mortality rate of the working population of Russia for the first half of 2015 decreased by 2.1 percent compared to the same period last year, according to Medportal, citing data from the Ministry of Health.

British and Finnish drug developers plan London IPOs

Ben Hirschler / Reuters

The moves come despite recent market volatility, triggered by fears about Chinese growth prospects, which have led to a sharp correction in U.S. biotechnology stocks after a 2-1/2-year boom. Although the London stock market was slower to catch the biotech bug initially, it has seen a steady build up in initial public offerings (IPOs) and venture funding, with public and private fundraisings hitting a 10-year high in 2014, according to the British Bioindustry Association.

New Market Research Report: Russia Pharmaceuticals & Healthcare Report Q3 2015

PR-Inside.com

Multinational pharmaceutical companies will experience greater challenges over the coming year as Russia's grim economic outlook will have a significant impact on consumer demand for pharmaceuticals . Furthermore, government measures, such as the introduction of further price controls, will hurt revenues of innovative and generic drugmakers.

Another Indian firm draws WHO notice on testing, manufacturing concerns

EJ Lane / FeircePharmaAsia

Indian company Svizera Labs has drawn a rebuke from the World Health Organization (WHO) for flawed manufacturing standards and testing procedures of tuberculosis drugs made for export to developing countries, the latest in a string of regulatory rebukes facing drugmakers in the country.

The new pace of venture capital fundraising? Why early stage VCs are fundraising faster than ever

PitchBook Blog

Many would agree that company financing dynamics in venture capital have changed in recent years, especially with respect to valuations rising, round sizes increasing and companies staying private for longer. From my vantage point, these dynamics are contributing to an accelerating pace of VC fundraising. The story told below using PitchBook data explains partly why early stage VCs have been coming back to fundraise faster and why this trend may persist if financing dynamics continue at their current pace.

NIH backs research to put genomic data into electronic medical records

Emily Wasserman / FierceMedicalDevices

As researchers home in on the genetic underpinnings of disease, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) is awarding a dozen grants to scientists who are exploring ways to combine genomic test information with electronic health records to improve care for patients.