Industry news

• Once upon a time in pharma: New storytelling strategies help messages stick—inside the company and out

  07 May 2021 Beth Snyder Bulik / FiercePharma

  Imagine Broadway actors putting on a short production or a Cartoon Network-like animation for internal corporate communications. Now imagine that happening inside a pharma company.

• Vaccine-induced prothrombotic immune thrombocytopenia: pathogenetic and epidemiological issues of concern

  07 May 2021 Giovanni Di Guardo / European Pharmaceutical Review

  Giovanni Di Guardo, DVM, Dipl. ECVP, retired Veterinary Pathologist, discusses the association between adenoviral vector COVID-19 vaccines and rare blood clots, outlining four areas warranting further research.

• $150 million made available for COVID-19 vaccine adverse event compensation scheme

  06 May 2021 Hannah Balfour / European Pharmaceutical Review

  The COVAX No-fault Compensation Program will offer individuals in 92 lower-income countries and economies compensation for serious adverse events associated with COVID-19 vaccines distributed through COVAX.

• The UK’s National Security and Investment Bill: a new paradigm for investment, M&A and licensing for life sciences companies

  06 May 2021 Adrian Toutoungi Headshot, Rebecca Le Flufy, Ross McNaughton Headhsot / European Pharmaceutical Review

  Rebecca Le Flufy, Ross McNaughton and Adrian Toutoungi from Taylor Wessing LLP review the potential impacts of the UK’s National Security and Investment Bill on the life sciences industry and how it could influence future deals.

• New PhRMA report shows nearly 90 medicines in development to fight drug-resistant infections, but future pipeline remains challenging

  05 May 2021 Andrew Powaleny / PhRMA

  The discovery and introduction of antibiotics in the 1940s transformed modern medicine and enabled tremendous progress in health care and life expectancy. Today, this progress is being threatened by a health crisis on the rise: antimicrobial resistance (AMR). AMR affects at least 3 million Americans and results in 48,000 U.S. deaths annually. 

• Building the UK’s domestic pharma manufacturing capability

  05 May 2021 Rich Quelch / European Pharmaceutical Review

  In this article, Rich Quelch, Global head of marketing at Origin, discusses how the UK’s pharmaceutical supply chain could be adapted to increase its resilience to future disruptions and the challenges in doing so.

• Risk Mitigation in Direct-to-Patient Clinical Trials

  04 May 2021 Nicole Gray / FierceBiotech

  The COVID-19 pandemic has made society very aware of the need to be flexible in the approach to daily life. Every part of “normal” day-to-day life has been disrupted. Clinical trials and the traditional way of conducting them has been no different. Flexibility became an immediate need for sponsors, CROs, clinical sites, and patients. Quick adjustments had to be made, along with finding new ways to make sure that patients had the appropriate care, oversight of the clinical sites continued to be managed, and drug supply and accountability were maintained. Many clinical sites found themselves acting as a shipping department, trying to make sure all of their patients received their drug safely and on time. CRAs performed remote oversight visits, virtual site tours, and virtual accountability audits. 

• Pharma advertising leapfrogged the norm during the pandemic­­—and creativity is flourishing, exec says

  04 May 2021 Beth Snyder Bulik / FiercePharma

  What happened to pharma creativity during the pandemic? It got better, says Klick Health Chief Creative Officer Rich Levy.

• Is combined recognition the solution for CAR-T therapy against glioblastoma, other solid tumors?

  30 April 2021 Angus Liu / FiercePharma

  CAR-T therapies that use engineered versions of patients' own immune cells to recognize cancer antigens have shown great efficacy in certain blood cancers. But they’ve been largely ineffective against solid tumors because of a lack of tumor-specific antigens and the tendency of CAR-Ts to wither in an immunosuppressive tumor microenvironment.

• FDA clears augmented reality smartglasses for guiding knee replacement surgeries

  30 April 2021 Conor Hale / FierceBiotech

  While most robotic surgery platforms chase precision by making surgeons adopt a wholly new system, Pixee Medical aims to help physicians finesse their own knee replacement procedures with its augmented reality headsets.