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Breaking News
To stay on top of the latest breaking news in research and development...
[ Published: 01/01/08 | Source: LeadDiscovery | More... ]
UK Pharmaceutical Executive Pay
Insight into Director Remuneration represents an effort to understand the pay of executive directors and non-executive directors working in the top 40 UK public biotechnology, healthcare and pharmaceutical companies...
[ Published: 01/01/08 | Source: Piribo | More... ]
The 21st Century Patient
For healthcare professionals, there has always been a belief that due to their educational qualifications, they have the ideal background to understand medical research and its developments. However, over the years the tendency of patients to question the advice they are given has grown and they are taking a much more active interest in healthcare issues, particularly through patient organizations...
[ Published: 20/01/07 | Source: Dr Faiz Kermani | More... ]
Underwater drug discovery
Modern drug discovery tends to favor automated approaches involving the creation of novel compounds within the laboratory setting. Although they are in the minority, a few companies in the industry still believe that the natural world holds clues that will result in breakthrough medical treatments. They may not receive much in the way of objective, mainstream scientific coverage, but natural products have been used for thousands of years to treat a host of medical conditions.
[ Published: 09/01/07 | Source: Dr Faiz Kermani | More... ]
The Value of Communication in Clinical Collaborations
Pharmaceutical and biotech companies often pay third-party vendors millions of dollars for their expertise, and routinely outsource the services and processes involved in the formulation, manufacture and delivery stages of pharmaceutical R&D. Leveraging the resources of third parties can be both efficient and cost-effective. By sharing information, pharmaceutical companies can get more out of their relationships with vendors...
[ Published: 08/01/07 | Source: Dr Faiz Kermani | More... ]
Deadly diseases with a distant impact
Although tropical and resurgent infectious diseases are most often associated with Africa, Asia and Latin America increased global travel and trade between regions has led to a growing number of cases being catalogued in Europe and the USA. There has also been a notable resurgence of diseases that were considered to be on the decline in these regions. The scale of modern travel is huge with there being an estimated international cross-border movement of two million people per day...
[ Published: 08/01/07 | Source: Dr Faiz Kermani | More... ]
Can Pakistan promote itself for clinical trials?
In the past decade, the interest in running clinical trials in so-called emerging regions of the world has surged. Within Asia while China and India continue to draw in international sponsors, Pakistan remains a relatively unknown quantity for clinical trials...
[ Published: 08/01/07 | Source: Dr Faiz Kermani | More... ]
South Korea pharmaceutical potential
Despite the ongoing risks and expense of drug development, new players are attempting to enter the market. While attention in Asia focuses on India and China, a number of Asian companies from other countries are showing a surprising level of innovation and determination. South Korea is one example of how these new players are trying to broaden their horizons and overcome the obstacles that stand in their way of bringing products to the global marketplace...
[ Published: 07/01/07 | Source: Dr Faiz Kermani | More... ]
Time for Drug Delivery to Deliver
Many pharmaceutical and biotech companies are having to deal with increasingly more potent, selective and complex molecules than they have in the past. For example, it has been estimated that around 38 of the top 100 products are peptide and protein-based. This situation is likely to continue in the future as advances in biotechnology along with the application of new discovery technologies, have led to a large increase in the number of macromolecule drugs over the last several years...
[ Published: 07/01/07 | Source: Dr Faiz Kermani | More... ]
Why Pharmaceutical Project Management
The course of drug development is unpredictable and therefore it is critical to have realistic expectations for any given project. There are inherent difficulties in running a drug development successfully and the larger the project the more numerous potential problems can be. Accounting for the factors that can stand in the way of a project’s success and being able to take an objective view of the strategies required is a demanding, but necessary task...
[ Published: 06/01/07 | Source: Dr Faiz Kermani | More... ]
The quest for quality in clinical trials
Although many people like to use the word to describe an object or illustrate the level of their performance, quality is rather a difficult concept to describe. In a sense quality implies a degree of excellence in the way a process is carried out. Therefore, it is not surprising that when it comes to the process of drug development high quality is expected...
[ Published: 06/01/07 | Source: Dr Faiz Kermani | More... ]
The Global Pharmaceutical Regulatory Environment
Even if a drug does get through the company’s R&D process it is then subject to the regulatory review process. This final stage of drug development is beyond the control of companies and yet it is the last hurdle to overcome before a drug reaches the market. The outcomes of such reviews cannot be predicted, but by planning ahead and seeking good advice on regulatory options and guideline changes, companies can be better prepared...
[ Published: 06/01/07 | Source: Dr Faiz Kermani | More... ]
Resisting the urge to merge
There has been a proliferation of mergers and acquisitions in other industries and as some of the companies created in this manner have gone on to dominate their sector there is an expectation that pharmaceutical companies might be able to do the same if they take this route. Many of those in favour of mergers make such decisions in order to gain a rapid return on their investment and tend to dwell less on the long-term productivity consequences...
[ Published: 06/01/07 | Source: Dr Faiz Kermani | More... ]
The future for India’s pharmaceutical ambitions
The Indian pharmaceutical industry has made no secret of its desire to globalize and eventually compete with its counterparts in Europe, Japan and the USA – as it has done in other industrial sectors. This is an ambitious aim because most of the Indian pharmaceutical industry’s current success has been achieved in the area of generics rather than innovative new drugs, and its multinational competitors have decades more experience in global drug development and much greater financial power...
[ Published: 05/01/07 | Source: Dr Faiz Kermani | More... ]
Italy’s Pharmaceutical Renaissance
In terms of value, Italy’s pharmaceutical market is the fourth largest in Europe and represents around 13% of the regional total. The continuing demand for pharmaceuticals has put pressure on the government’s overall funding of healthcare, which stands at around 9% of Gross Domestic Product (GDP). As has been observed in many other countries the growth in pharmaceutical spending has begun to outstrip the growth in total healthcare spending...
[ Published: 05/01/07 | Source: Dr Fiz Kermani | More... ]
Playing catch up with US Biotech
Although the biotech sector is showing promise in terms of innovation, companies in this sector must get their products to market under the same tough conditions as their major pharmaceutical counterparts. Few biotech companies have been able to devise a strategy to succeed in this hostile environment on their own, but there is no shortage of new entrants in the market...
[ Published: 05/01/07 | Source: Dr Faiz Kermani | More... ]
Can the European pharmaceutical industry survive?
In recent years, the general R&D environment in Europe has become less attractive to companies than that in the US and a number of companies have preferentially shifted investment across the Atlantic. The European pharmaceutical industry’s own figures demonstrate how dramatic this shift has been...
[ Published: 04/01/07 | Source: Dr Faiz Kermani | More... ]
Healthcare costs rising fast
Over the last 100 years, tremendous advances have been made in terms of healthcare, but this has also led to greater expectations in terms of the service that people expect to receive and a dilemma for governments in controlling the resulting, growing healthcare expenditure...
[ Published: 04/01/07 | Source: Dr Faiz Kermani | More... ]
Japan’s Biotech struggle
Japanese biopharmaceutical companies have played an important part in new drug innovation. Some of the world’s leading drugs, such as Bristol-Myers Squibb’s pravastatin for high cholesterol, TAP’s lansoprazole and Daiichi’s levofloxacin were discovered in Japanese laboratories. With this history of important drug research there is keen interest in biotechnology...
[ Published: 03/01/07 | Source: Dr Faiz Kermani | More... ]
Clinical trials in Argentina
The healthcare infrastructure in Argentina is considered to be one of the more sophisticated in Latin America and this has led to a an interest in using it as a location for clinical research. All of Argentina’s provinces have an organized network of hospital and outpatients services. The country’s position as a leading Latin American market means that most international companies are well-represented...
[ Published: 03/01/07 | Source: Dr Faiz Kermani | More... ]
A new dawn for neglected diseases?
Despite numerous improvements, drug development remains an expensive and lengthy multi-stage process with there being no guarantees of success. Therefore drug development organizations are often preoccupied with recouping R&D investment upon subsequently marketing a product. Unfortunately, this has resulted in many companies avoiding certain therapeutic areas as they are not perceived as offering sufficient financial rewards for products...
[ Published: 02/01/07 | Source: Dr Faiz Kermani | More... ]
Ups and downs in Venezuela’s healthcare market
The healthcare system in Venezuela is made up of public, private and social security sectors. The main institutions are the Ministry of Health and Social Welfare, the Venezuelan Social Security Institute, the Social Welfare Institute of the Ministry of Education, the Institute of Social Welfare of the Armed Forces, the Government of the Federal District, and the Municipal Council of Sucre, Miranda State...
[ Published: 30/12/06 | Source: Dr Faiz Kermani | More... ]
The healthcare market in Colombia
There have been considerable efforts by the Colombian government to expand access to basic healthcare services. There are over 750 public hospitals and medical centres in Colombia and in 2002, IMS Health estimated that healthcare spending as percentage of GDP was somewhere between 8% and 9%. In 1993, Law 100 was brought in which guaranteed a certain level of essential health services regardless of the ability to pay...
[ Published: 30/12/06 | Source: Dr Faiz Kermani | More... ]
Implications of Latin American healthcare reform
Many Latin American countries have focused on established modern economies which attract foreign investment, but less attention has been focused on raising the status of those on low incomes in these countries. As democracy begins to play a greater role in Latin America, more attention will be paid to the poorer sections of society...
[ Published: 29/12/06 | Source: Dr Faiz Kermani | More... ]
Chile: A healthcare snapshot
Since 2000, healthcare reform in Chile has been on of the major political issues in order to reduce the inequality in healthcare access that currently exists. The government is attempting to guarantee the population a minimum level of care for 56 priority illnesses. By 2002, healthcare funding was increased by 10% and it formed one of the largest components of government spending...
[ Published: 29/12/06 | Source: Dr Faiz Kermani | More... ]