Drug Discovery and Development

In the emerging field of digital pathology, Aleksandra Zuraw, DVM, Ph.D., DACVP, is one of the most prominent voices. Her journey to this position, however, was far from straightforward. When Zuraw was 12, she dreamed of becoming a veterinarian, picturing herself following in the footsteps of the British veterinary surgeon James Herriot, tending to “All Creatures…

The potential of Artificial Intelligence (AI) to accelerate medical discovery is immense, particularly within the dynamic and mutable area of biology. Unlike the more predictable fields of chemistry and physics, biology presents unique challenges due to its complexity and constant adaptation, areas where AI can play a transformative role but has been limited to date…

 In the first five months of 2024, there was a surge in high-value deals, though none have yet matched the scale of Pfizer’s $43 billion acquisition of Seagen, which closed in December 2023. With Novo Holdings’ $16.5 billion purchase of Catalent leading the pack, 2024 reflects a mixed but strong trend toward sizable M&A…

After ChatGPT debuted in late 2022 and GPT-4 hit the scene in March of the following year, many executives at pharma companies sat up and took note, interested in new tech that could accelerate the stubbornly slow drug development process. Translating that vision into reality, however, is not straightforward and a significant number of pharma…

In February, Novo Holdings announced one of the largest M&A deals in recent memory with its plans to acquire Catalent, a leading contract drug manufacturer, for a cool $16.5 billion. The deal could accelerate production of Novo Nordisk’s blockbuster diabetes and weight-loss medications, Ozempic and Wegovy, given skyrocketing demand. But while the Novo-Catalent deal marks…

 Many of the job cuts in 2024 are in Massachusetts, but the state still has one of the densest concentrations of job listings based on a dataset of more than 3,300 online job postings from May. Yet the Northeast Megalopolis excluding the Bay State was home to more jobs overall, with states such as…

It’s something of a truism that about nine out of ten drug candidates in clinical trials fail to reach the market. While some amount of guess-work is unavoidable in drug development, Dr. Ali Pashazadeh, co-founder and CEO of Treehill Partners sees faulty decision-making and poor communication as chief factors contributing to high failure rate. While…

The pharmaceutical industry is grappling with the consequences of a significant data breach at Cencora, the prominent drug distributor formerly known as AmerisourceBergen. Recent cybersecurity rules from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commissions (SEC), which came into effect in December 2023, have also played a role in a wave of data breach reports, highlighting the…

 An analysis of 19 prominent pharma companies, including Johnson & Johnson, Pfizer, Lilly, Roche, Merck & Co. among others, revealed that the average stock return was 3.7% points in 2023. (Lilly was the best performing with a return of 59% while Moderna was the worst in the list with a return of –44%.) By…

The Greater Boston Area, New York City Metro and San Francisco Bay Area are the top three hubs for biopharma job listings based on an analysis of more than 1,700 recent job postings. Within these hubs, prominent job listing title examples include Vice President of Intellectual Property, Scientist (Bioassay) and Data Scientist I and Research…

While there are currently no FDA-approved AI-discovered drugs, interest in generative AI (genAI) could be a game-changer for the pharmaceutical industry in the coming years. Sanofi, which has signaled its intent to go “all in” on AI, has inked a deal with ChatGPT developer OpenAI and Formation Bio to build AI-powered software to speed drug…

Using job posting data gathered via the data aggregation service Apify.com, we sifted through a total of 1,755 recent pharma and biotech job listings to find, unsurprisingly, that managers working in senior and director-level roles are the best-paid in the industry. Across the entire data set, the median salary range for the job descriptions was…

The biopharma’s layoff woes continue to make headlines, but the news is not all negative. To get a clearer picture, we gathered data on layoffs, new plant announcements and companies hiring, including specific coordinates for locations down to the address level, when possible. After clustering the data, we identified the top- and worst-performing global hubs.…

The success of any organization is dependent on consistent, clear, and reliable information sharing among all internal stakeholders. In the pharmaceutical industry, where there are multiple complex layers within manufacturing processes, communication among teams is especially critical. If information-sharing gaps occur among these layers, vulnerabilities could result in costly errors impacting all levels of the…

Radionuclide Drug Conjugates (RDCs) hold the potential to transform cancer treatment by offering effective, precise treatment and diagnosis with minimal side effects. Regulators have already approved several RDCs around the world, and more are in the pipeline as researchers seek to further improve their efficacy, safety, and personalization. RDCs have evolved from other branches of…

Is aging a disease or a natural process? That question has emerged as a point of debate among researchers, medical professionals and philosophers. Some, like biogerontologist David Gems, argue that lines between aging and disease are frequently blurry, and that intervening in the aging process “protects against the totality of age-related diseases.” Other researchers such…

The FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research (CDER) recently unveiled the launch of the CDER Center for Clinical Trial Innovation (C3TI), which aims to drive clinical trial innovation. When asked to assess the potential impact of the center, Charles Fisher, founder and CEO of Unlearn, said: “The truth is, I don’t know. I’m sort…

Isomorphic Labs and Google DeepMind have unveiled AlphaFold 3, a powerful AI system that draws on a novel diffusion-based architecture to accurately model the structures of complexes containing proteins, nucleic acids, DNA and RNA strands, small molecules, ions and modified residues. Diffusion models are a type of generative model that has won significant popularity in…

Over the past few decades, structural biology has undergone a quiet renaissance, thanks in large part to technological advances in cryogenic electron microscopy (cryo-EM) and computational techniques. Cryo-EM has emerged as a powerful tool for determining the high-resolution structures of proteins and protein complexes, complementing traditional methods like X-ray crystallography and nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR)…

A recent review of financial data from 25 major pharmaceutical companies reveals an inconsistent relationship between R&D spending, revenue, and stock returns. The analysis, which included industry giants such as Merck, Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson, and AbbVie, among others, aimed to uncover potential correlations between these key performance indicators. The companies with the highest highest…

Deloitte’s 14th annual report on pharma innovation reveals a modest uptick in R&D returns for 2023, with the projected internal rate of return (IRR) for the pharma sector rising to 4.1% after hitting a low of 1.2% in 2022. Yet the report emphasizes the need for biopharma companies to adapt to ongoing challenges and leverage…

Which major pharmaceutical company leads the way in research and development? Data reveals that the top R&D spender in 2023 was Merck & Co., by a wide margin. While Pfizer had almost as much revenue as Merck ($60.1 billion vs. $58.5 billion), its R&D ratio was on the lower end at 18.29%, or $10.7 billion.…

[Updated May 10, 2024] In the face of rising R&D costs and growing pricing pressures from payers, the pharma and biotech sectors continue to transform to adapt to an evolving landscape. While workforce reductions persist in 2024 for some companies, major players like AbbVie, AGC Biologics, Amgen, Novartis and Thermo Fisher Scientific are demonstrating confidence…

Medincell and AbbVie today announced a collaboration to co-develop and commercialize up to six therapeutic products across several areas. The partnership spans multiple therapeutic spaces and indications. Under the agreement, Medincell will use its commercial-stage, long-acting injectable technology platform to formulate innovative therapies. It plans to conduct formulation activities and preclinical studies, including supportive CMC…

Ypsomed announced today that it entered into a partnership with ten23 health to develop therapeutics for the YpsoDose wearable injector. Burgdorf, Switzerland-based Ypsomed designed YpsoDose for the subcutaneous self-injection of large-volume doses. ten23 health, a Swiss CDMO, offers drug development, filling and device assembly expertise to contribute to the product offering. The strategic collaboration sees…