Industry news

• Leveraging end-to-end manufacturing solutions with scale, capability, and flexibility

  09 April 2021 FiercePharma

  Building a solid commercial drug strategy is centered on engaging partners strategically and at the earliest stage possible. Drug developers need partners with a wide range of experience that can guide their products to successful commercialization as each milestone is a critical step and any sort of disruption can cause severe loss in cost and time, and consequently, in delivering to patients in need. Samsung Biologics’ aseptic fill-finish services are expertly aligned and optimized to the client’s needs throughout the development and commercialization journey.

• Did pharma overshoot digital sales rep calls? Study charts decline in effectiveness

  09 April 2021 Beth Snyder Bulik / FiercePharma

  A year after the pandemic forced pharma reps to switch from in-person to digital sales calls, most visits are still virtual—and the industry is seeing mixed results.

• See today's BioWorld Study shows neurological or psychiatric diagnoses for one in three COVID-19 survivors

  08 April 2021 Nuala Moran / BioWorld

  The largest study to date, involving 236,379 confirmed cases, shows that one in three survivors of COVID-19 was diagnosed with a neurological or psychiatric condition within six months of contracting the infection. For 13% of those patients, it was their first such diagnosis.

• New clinical milestones reached as multiple COVID-19 vaccines and therapies advance

  08 April 2021 Michael Fitzhugh / BioWorld

  Plans for a late-stage test of Valneva SE's COVID-19 vaccine candidate, clinical progress on a different vaccine from Novavax Inc. and advancement for two midstage therapies targeting the virus made clear April 6 that industry efforts to battle the pandemic remain in high gear. Meanwhile, a new journal article on the Abcellera Biologics Inc. and Eli Lilly and Co. asset bamlanivimab pointed to "the feasibility of strategies to rapidly identify neutralizing human mAbs as part of an initial response to an evolving pandemic," researchers wrote in Science Translational Medicine.

• NIH finds success in capturing breaths to assess and treat rare genomic disease

  07 April 2021 Andrea Park / FiercePharma

  Rare, incurable conditions call for the most innovative treatments—and that’s exactly the approach the National Institutes of Health is taking to develop a new test for patients with methylmalonic acidemia, or MMA.

• The big debate. Beyond the data and document distinction: how to transform life sciences experiences via improved information flow

  07 April 2021 James Kelleher, Remco Munnik, Steve Gens / European Pharmaceutical Review

  The life sciences industry may have been slower than other markets to appreciate the benefits of holistic data and document management, but that is changing rapidly now. Here, life sciences data and content management visionaries Steve Gens of Gens & Associates, Remco Munnik of Iperion and James Kelleher of Generis discuss the drivers for digital transformation of data and documents management in life sciences, the practicalities of delivering it and the new opportunities it presents.

• NAFLD & NASH: Emerging In Vitro Models Aid Drug Discovery

  06 April 2021 FierceBiotech

  Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) is a common liver pathology, characterized by hepatic steatosis. It can progress to non-alcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH) with the added presence of hepatocyte ballooning, lobular inflammation and fibrosis not brought on through excess alcohol consumption.

• NEWS Deception is not necessary for the placebo effect, finds new study

  06 April 2021 Hannah Balfour / European Pharmaceutical Review

  The study found that patients with irritable bowel syndrome taking open-label placebo reported similar improvements to those taking double-blind placebo.

• Decentralised clinical trials: paving the way for modernisation

  05 April 2021 Carolina Rossi / European Pharmaceutical Review

  The pressures of the pandemic have brought into sharp focus the need for greater innovation and modernisation across the pharmaceutical industry. This is especially the case when it comes to traditional clinical trials, which have often been marred by costly, inefficient and logistically demanding processes. But things are changing and new technologies are making decentralised trials increasingly possible.

• Breast cancer studies pinpoint potential new drug targets to fight resistance

  05 April 2021 Angus Liu / FiercePharma

  Several types of treatments are used against breast cancer, including chemotherapy, immunotherapy and drugs that target specific genes and proteins. But not all patients respond to them, so new options for reducing treatment resistance are in high demand.