GlaxoSmithKline this week gave the UK government and several trade organisations reason to celebrate after announcing that it will build a new manufacturing facility in the country — the first in almost forty years. The facility will be dedicated to biopharmaceuticals and will create new jobs in Ulveston, Cumbria, which has been chosen for the new site. Read more »

Just over a week ago, I decided to hop on the early train to Glasgow, Scotland, so that I might catch at least half of the 8th bioProcess UK conference, focusing on advancing next generation therapies. The meeting was held in the very fitting Glasgow Science Center and, given the strikes over public sector pensions that day, there were plenty of youngsters mingling with the crowds—the next generation of bioprocess engineers perhaps? Amazingly, presentations were delivered in the IMAX theatre—I have never seen PowerPoint slides on such a scale before—but given the eminence of some of the keynote speakers involved, it too was quite apt. Read more »

Walking through the halls of CPhI Worldwide, it was hard to recognise it as the space just a few short hours before; the place had been transformed by teams, presumably working through the night, and the addition of a good many people provided enough hustle and bustle even early on to indicate that it would be a good show for all. Read more »

As the unemployment rate hovers around 9.1%, the federal government needs to find ways to create jobs. Congress is debating whether a tax break on repatriated money would prompt companies to hire more workers, as I mentioned last week. Meanwhile, the Obama administration is eyeing another potential means of stimulating job growth: investing in biological research. Read more »

Some drugmakers have blamed what they see as a slow and overly cautious FDA for the industry’s weak pipelines. Last week, I cited drug-approval figures to show that the agency was not standing in the way of innovation. A closer look at the figures contradicts another part of the critics’ argument—the industry’s pipelines may not be so weak after all. Read more »

Facility rationalizations, outsourcing, and staff reductions can provide only so much of a cushion to pharmaceutical and biopharmaceutical manufacturers about to drop off the patent cliff. The ideal way to remain profitable is to discover and develop innovative new drugs, but this task has proven increasingly difficult for drugmakers over the past few years. Jonathan Leff, a managing director at venture-capital firm Warburg Pincus, says that FDA is partly to blame. Read more »

Biologics are still the hot commodity in the drug industry. Observers call large-molecule drugs the therapies of the future, and these medicines’ complexity makes them difficult for would-be follow-on manufacturers to create. Big Pharma companies that have not yet acquired biopharmaceuticals firms are considering doing so to bolster their pipelines and profits. But not all biologics companies are living large, as data from Ernst & Young remind us. Read more »

Makers of small-molecule drugs are in treacherous waters. The Scylla of generic-drug competition rears on the horizon, ready to bite into innovators’ profits. At the same time, companies’ research-and-development productivity seems to have been sucked down into Charybdis. How will drugmakers survive these perils? Read more »

Big Pharma’s sales forecast is not likely to improve anytime soon. Consulting firm Bain and Company predicts that the top 25 drug companies’ annual sales growth will be no more than 1% through 2016. To compensate for reduced revenue, investors are urging manufacturers to cut expenses that do not add value. One such expense, in many investors’ eyes, is research and development (R&D). Read more »

Biosimilars can be considered a controversial subject because of safety concerns related to immunogenicity. Despite this, the biosimilars industry seems to be booming. Recent research from industry analysts Datamonitor estimated that the value of the global market for biosimilars would jump from $243 million in 2010 to $3.7 billion in 2015, and the biosimilars have now been used safely for 5 years, according to the European Generic Medicines Association (EGA). Read more »