It’s hard to get precise figures of how many people have been taken off the payroll at pharma and biotech companies recently. According to staffing firm, Challender, Gray and Christmas, the combined industries shed 58,969 jobs in the first nine months of 2009, 15,000 more than the whole of 2008. In total, that makes around 74,000 redundancies in just 21 months, many but not all of which came from sales forces. Figures from FiercePharma, meanwhile, show just ten companies saw 66,850 jobs go in 2009. And this doesn’t include layoffs from the merger of Roche and Genentech, nor the 860 jobs that were announced at Boehringer Ingelheim in August. Read more »

There has been a surge in the number of combination product (i.e. where a drug product is combined with a medical device) launches in recent years and this trend is set to continue as more companies seek to extend the life of existing branded medicines. According to analysts, the combination product market is currently worth 8 billion Euros and will grow by a staggering 40% during the next 3 years. Read more »

Last Thursday, the Biotechnology Industry Organization (BIO) weighed in on a patent issue that will soon be before the Supreme Court. In an amicus brief, BIO argued that the Court should overturn Bilski v. Doll, a decision of the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. The case involved Bernard L. Bilski’s method for hedging risks in commodities trading. Read more »

Innovation, innovation, innovation .. and a call to focus on science and quality-by-design (QbD) principles. Such was much of the talk yesterday at this year’s AAPS National Biotechnology Conference in Seattle. Speakers discussed the tools the biotechnology industry will need for future innovation and how the industry must center on QbD principles, using lessons learned from small-molecule development and even nonregulated industries. Read more »

While we at PharmTech are very proud of our peer-review process for ensuring quality scientific articles, I was a bit humbled to learn of a massive endeavor by the National Institutes of Health to enlist the help of more than 18,000 scientists to help in their peer-review process. To put things in perspective, the process is in response to NIH receiving nearly 20,000 applications for Challenge Grants, a new program under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA). According to the organization, the number of applications is about equal to the total number of applications it receives in one of its three major review rounds every year. The number of applications and the peer review process is the largest response in NIH history, according to acting NIH director Raynard S. Kington. Read more »

The almost overnight public concern and media attention over the swine flu outbreak has again turned the attention to pandemic preparedness. Officials continue to encourage preventive actions and precautions, noting that, as of yet, it is still unknown whether current vaccines and antivirals will have any effect against the strain responsible for this outbreak. It is also unknown whether those who received a vaccination during the 1976 US swine flu outbreak will have some protection against the current strain. Read more »

It is inspiring to read news about the advancements being made in the fight against viral infections, including those against influenza and HIV. However, as comments to recent blog posts have reminded me, the struggle to develop antiviral therapies is highly complicated because viruses have the infamous tendency to mutate and adapt in their fight for survival and conquest of healthy cells. A major part of formulating and developing antivirals is trying to get some handle on a virus’s unpredictable nature, how it will change, and how these modified forms will strengthen our understanding of its interworkings. Read more »

Another sign of the troubling economic times and its impact on the life-science sector comes from the United Kindgom, where industry representatives are requesting government assistance, according to a Times of London article. Read more »

Biotechnology pundits have pointed out the similar views current major presidential candidates share on stem cell research even including embryonic stem cell research. So far, it appears the issue has not played quite the major role in politics as it did in 2004. Perhaps this has to do with the increased familiarity with the purpose and promises of stem cell work within medical research and development. Read more »

People always giggle when I say that, but it’s true. Of all the “basic” sciences, biology is the most slippery. By that I mean that, while the tendency is to study biomolecules and cells in isolation, the total animal, be it a bacterium or a human being, is a federation of molecules, organelles, or organs (depending on how big and multicellular you are), and they all act together to create a phenotype, a behavior, a syndrome, or a disease in the intact organism.
So it should hardly be a surprise to anyone who recognizes this fact that drugs for complex conditions, developed with reductionist biological models, yield disappointing results in the clinic. And yet it is. Read more »