Sanofi may pay Dice Molecules as much as $2.3 billion as France’s largest drugmaker looks to make pills work in place of injections for some diseases.
Sanofi agreed to pay Dice more than $50 million initially to get exclusive access to some of its technology and take an equity stake in the closely held company, which uses smaller chemicals to mimic the effect of drugs that require injections or infusions, according to a statement Wednesday. The companies will work on 12 potential drug targets over five years. Dice stands to get as much as $184 million for each candidate if it meets certain development goals, such as key clinical milestones or a regulatory submission.
Dice aims to make pills that can work in the same fashion as antibodies, large proteins that companies make by splicing genes into cells and turning them into drug factories. But because antibodies are so large and complex, they often need to be kept at low temperatures and given by injection, constraints small molecules such as Dice’s might avoid.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-03-16/sanofi-offers-dice-billions-to-replace-injections-with-pills
 

Partnerships Cracking the Code for Innovation

Wanted: Innovators ready to disrupt biotechnology and healthcare with revolutionary ideas. Find out how to partner with the Life Sciences licensing team at GE Healthcare: http://bit.ly/LifeSciencesLicensing 

Reverse innovations - communist's approach?

Targeted failure - somebody takes it for targeted drugs

Good/Bad Strategy... from communist???

Chicken - communist propaganda

Nanobots - The imagination

 

 

Who cares?

Pfizer is the largest drug maker in the United States, but after striking a deal on Monday to buy Allergan, the company is on the verge of becoming Irish.
For shareholders, this may be their lucky charm. After the merger, Pfizer will be able to shift its legal headquarters from New York to Dublin and pay lower taxes, which should bolster its bottom line. But in the process, scientists are likely to lose their jobs, innovation may suffer, and consumers could pay more for Pfizer medicines.
This is often true of many large takeovers in the pharmaceutical industry as companies look to slash expenses and quickly appease investors. In this case, about $2 billion in cuts are planned. But the type of deal Pfizer is pursuing, which is known as a tax inversion, appears destined to accentuate the downsides
http://www.statnews.com/pharmalot/2015/11/23/pharmalot-pfizer-allergan-innovation/
 

The top 10 biopharma pipeline disasters of 2015...

Targeted failures - most Epic ones...
http://www.fiercebiotech.com/special-reports/top-10-biopharma-pipeline-disasters-2015

The story...

When FDA inspectors showed up at a Chinese company that supplies key ingredients to two of the U.S.’s biggest drug companies, a curious thing happened.
After lunch, they walked into a quality control lab on the second floor, where they saw a worker pull what looked like a memory stick from a computer and put it in the pocket of his lab coat. The inspectors asked to see what he’d taken.
And then the man turned and ran.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-10-28/fda-shows-up-a-man-runs-and-questions-emerge-on-china-s-drugs

Targeted failure of the week. Kadcyla. When rocket science medicine fails...

Oct 22 (Reuters) - ImmunoGen Inc said the gastric cancer drug it is developing with Roche Holding AG did not meet the main goal in a large study. http://finance.yahoo.com/news/immunogen-roche-gastric-cancer-drug-121659032.html

Trastuzumab emtansine ( ado-trastuzumab emtansine, trade name Kadcyla) is an antibody-drug conjugate consisting of the monoclonal antibody trastuzumab (Herceptin) linked to the cytotoxic agent DM1.

 

This drug is a real rocket science approach. And it failed...

Communist are back!

U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton proposed on Tuesday a $250 monthly cap on out-of-pocket prescription drug costs and other measures to stop what she called "price gouging" by pharmaceutical companies.
At a campaign stop in Iowa, Clinton rolled out a plan to encourage the development and use of generic drugs and to end pharmaceutical companies' ability to write off consumer-directed advertising as a business expense.
Under Clinton's plan, the monthly cap would limit what insurance companies could ask patients to pay for drugs that treat chronic or serious medical conditions.

http://in.reuters.com/article/2015/09/23/us-usa-election-clinton-idINKCN0RM08D20150923

How much are you worth?

Generally, economists suggest that one additional year in perfect health in the U.S. is worth somewhere between $50,000 and $200,000 a year.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonkblog/wp/2015/08/27/cancer-drugs-arent-just-really-expensive-theyre-a-bad-value/
In other Words: $4,200 and $16,700 per month
Or $137 and $548 per day....

 

What is wrong with Eli Lilly???

Eli Lilly is staking its future on a pair of high-stakes Phase III programs, shying away from any big biotech buyouts as sticker prices continue to soar.

http://www.fiercebiotech.com/story/lillys-ceo-keeps-faith-pipeline-biotech-gets-too-expensive/2015-08-14?utm_medium=rss&utm_source=feedly&utm_campaign=rss



It is better to be healthy and wealthy than sick and ugly - no doubt about it!

Allergan, which is selling its generics business to focus on branded drugs and aesthetics products, aims to acquire or license products that have already shown promise in studies, and leave the riskier discovery process to small biotechs and academic researchers.
"The best way for us to participate in discovery is investing in a more 'virtual' sense, than actually building and running our own labs," company Chief Executive Brent Saunders said in an interview after Allergan reported second-quarter results on Thursday.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/08/06/allergan-medicine-idUSL1N10H3EO20150806
 

When rocket science is no enough

Eli Lilly and Company (LLY) today notified the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) of its intent to end its contract with the university for the management of the Anti-amyloid Treatment in Asymptomatic Alzheimer's disease (A4) study. The A4 study is a novel clinical trial testing solanezumab in the preclinical stage of Alzheimer's disease in older individuals who have evidence of amyloid in their brains on a PET scan, but do not show symptoms of memory impairment.
http://yhoo.it/1DtKu6s
 

FDA Prepares For LPAD

One of the bedrock consensus issues throughout the drafting of the “21^st Century Cures” legislation has been that the bill should create a pathway for approval of new antibacterials for limited populations – the LPAD pathway. But what would it actually do?

---

A limited use approval pathway is one of the more intriguing components of the “21^st Century Cures” FDA reform provisions. As the legislation moves to the Senate, FDA is joining other stakeholders to outline its vision for how the new authority would work. https://www.pharmamedtechbi.com/publications/rpm-report/first-take/2015/3/lpad

The question: are you sure that you belong to this limited part of population???


 

For only the third time, an Indian drug maker is seeking to win a compulsory license in order to make and sell a generic version of a brand-name medicine. And the effort is likely to be closely watched as the global pharmaceutical industry looks for signs that the Indian government will alter its approach toward protecting patent rights.


http://blogs.wsj.com/pharmalot/2015/07/09/will-india-issue-a-compulsory-license-for-an-astrazeneca-diabetes-pill/?mod=WSJBlog

 

Market based medicine development

• Sembragiline, a joint development project for Alzheimer's disease from Roche and Evotec, did not demonstrate cognitive benefit in treated patients with Alzheimer's disease (AD) after 52 weeks. 
• This is the second AD drug failure for Roche in the last two years, including gantenerumab, which failed late last year.
• Evotec is still dedicated to CNS R&D, and has more than 70 CNS-related products at various stages of development in their portfolio, according to Evotec CEO Werner Lanthaler. 

http://www.biopharmadive.com/news/another-roche-alzheimers-drug-disappoints/401788/

Bayer: M&A sucks!

• While it seems that many biopharma shops are scaling back R&D departments in the wake of mergers and consolidation, Bayer is investing about $4.5 billion in R&D this year. In fact, the firm has 14,000 employees dedicated solely to research and development.
• Bayer's R&D spending represents about 8.5% of its revenues.
• Development costs for Xarelto (rivoroxaban), a blood thinner, were roughly $2.5 billion.

http://www.biopharmadive.com/news/bayer-beefs-up-rd-investment-to-45-billion-this-year/401079/