Edward Jenner’s work in developing the world’s first smallpox vaccine in the 1790s demonstrated that it was possible to protect the general population from major threats to public health, and vaccine development aimed at combating the major concerns of the day has continued ever since. There have been many successes, and vaccines are now available […]
The Lasting Advantage
Why are some firms more competitive than others? This is the central question of my research in the field of strategic management. Decades of research, in both the life sciences and other industries, have converged to suggest there are perhaps three overarching reasons. The first is the most obvious: what academics call the ‘Resource-Based View […]
Pharma and Biotech
Collaborations are the voluntary, joint actions of two or more parties to achieve a common goal. This is a straightforward concept in principle, but often more complex in the real world. Within the pharmaceutical and biotechnology sectors, one can easily identify at least six major classes of stakeholders, viz. private industry, academia, regulatory agencies, governments […]
Next Generation Pharmacovigilance
In an environment where development costs have increased exponentially while filings and launches have dropped drastically, the pharmaceutical industry and drug regulators face numerous challenges in Pharmacovigilance (PV), patient safety and in addressing areas of unmet medical needs. This combination of issues not only adds unsustainable access restrictions and costs in the long term, but […]
Breaking Down Borders
If you had run into Mark Engel, CEO and founder of Excel PharmaStudies, at the recent 2008 China Pharmaceutical R&D Summit at Shanghai, you would realise that even the young biotech industry in Asia is not immune to the rapid globalisation of drug discovery and development. Excel, a leading CRO, was started by a western […]
Metabolic Biomarker and Target Discovery in Obesity-Associated Comorbidities
Millions of adults are diagnosed as obese each year worldwide. Many of these people suffer from a disorder known as metabolic syndrome, which includes symptoms such as hypertension and elevated blood cholesterol. They are also at risk of developing additional diseases, such as heart disease and diabetes mellitus. Obesity may, in fact, be a major […]
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Outsourcing preclinical and clinical R&D to China
China has emerged from the shadows of isolation to become a world economic power with a staggering growth rate (8% per annum for the past five years) that will soon eclipse the likes of France and England. Low-cost manufacturing and the availability of inexpensive and abundant labour have fuelled this growth. However, in order to […]
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Biosimilars Perspective and its Challenges
Although currently small and narrowly focussed on a few disease areas and countries, the Biosimilars landscape is set to expand as patents expire on leading biologics, US legislation comes into effect, vision for pharma emerging markets and payers push for their wider adoption to manage burgeoning costs. The signs are visible, but questions remain. How […]
The Arab Drug Industry
In response to the 21st century challenges to the health sector, WHO established an important global commission on Macroeconomics and Health. One of the important conclusions of the commission report indicated that by the year 2015, the world could save up to 10.5 million lives every year by scaling up access to existing health interventions […]
The Six Great Shifts
Many languages have an equivalent to the expression “Seeing the forest for the trees”, meaning the ability to discern the big picture from little details. That ability is important in life but especially true for leaders of life sciences sector. Every day we are bombarded with news of innovative technology, tighter regulation and new approaches […]