Biotech graveyard.................

Recently I was reading an article in Fierce Biotech site, It had listed down around 16 companies which went for liquidation for reasons ranging from poor clinical data to investors not bailing out.........Most of the companies which went into so called Biotech graveyard rather were focusing on host of metabolic, pain and blood related area's.....Those were the days in early 70's and 80's when maximum amount of work had been carried out in metabolic disorders, then cardiovascular and pain .......Now what I have observed is there is lot MAb race happening not only in United states and across the globe, so what I feel is these innovative companies before rolling out should do their further SWOT in specific therapeutic area they want to venture...How much money they will be able to get from market so that they are able to sustain themselves till Phase III studies ......what do u say about this?

Biotech Boom or Curse

I had gone out for a long vacation this time of year for Diwali and Kali Pujo(Both Indian festival) and then had been to Santiniketan (Rabindranath founded Vishwa Bharti University there in early 1900's)......So feeling fresh and back to Business development......Yesterday was going through the pharma updates in various papers....Again this quarter GSK has again become active in the cancer domain and lot of small and medium size licensing happening again in this anti cancer biologics domain.....What took me by surprise at one end Roche is planning to hire 70 scientist for its NJ campus for Arthritis research and around 2-3 months before it had given pink slips to around 300 people in its west coast California based research center including scientists and technicians......Has Biotechnology become Boom or Curse for people?

Biotech Boom

Year 2000 every nook and corner the news was the next happening thing after green and white revolution was going to be genome revolution though this think never happened in last 9 years but the recent trends are giving me lot positive vibes regarding biotechnology being the happening things, If we just review the pipeline for Top 20 Global Pharma we observe that most of them have started filling their pipeline with Mab (Monoclonal antibody production) or peptide development, Assay development etc etc........what is your opinion about it ?........

Last Quarter................Biggest Deal.................

Yesterday Abbott Lab shares were up in the wall street as it had finally closed the deal to acquire Solvey Pharamaceutical (Belgium) for a whopping $6.6 billion deal, Abbott with this deal will acquire Solvay’s cholesterol drugs (Trilipix and Tricor) Market analyst report that Abbott will raise its sales to $3 billion in this particular portfolio by this coming year, Last quarter what we missed is that Abbott also went to acquire two medical devices companies one is Evalve Inc which is into cardiac valve development, deal size $410 Million and then Visiogen Inc (Eye treatment)- deal size $440 Million......first quarter of this year it also went to close a deal worth $2.2 billion when is acquired Advance medical optic (lens maker).....the thing to observe is these new innovation companies which Abbott went into acquire this year....will they help in to sustain its brand image and be the market leader which it has been in medical devices area for so long?

Australasia................

How many of us in India know that Australia is home to one of the largest phrma companies which ranks in top 35 in terms of healthcare revenue....how many of us know about CSl which is also developing its own H1N1 vaccine.......Today the headline is that Sanofi, Merck , Pfizer and Glaxosmithkline are expected to bid for Australia's own iNova Pharmaceuticals which is into Over ther counter and prescription drugs. The deal is going to be worth $816 Million........

Biotech Spin......................

In the late 90s and early 2000 many biotechnology startup started blooming up in New jersey, Massachusetts, Seattle, Bay area and in southern California in United States, likewise the same trend was observed in Europe in Germany, Denmark, Sweden, Belgium, Copenhagen and Cambridge area in United kingdom....at that time human genome sequencing was at peak and every where around the world Biotechnology was talk of globe, it was said that Biotechnology was going to be the next boom.......The question which arise in my mind is did this boom ever happened? Out of the 100 startups at that time, how many are still there or at the verge of existence......For most they had venture and angle investor backup but after 2005 those sources either backed off or they went into bankruptcy.....So now the only mantra of survival for these firms is to have their own money and stand alone in this not so happening biotechnology boom.......How many companies like this are existing or rather surviving?

3M...Name says it all .....................

I have read a lot about 3M for past many years, 3M was and still is a leading innovative company in United states and one of the best places to work :) ....Today 3M in its press release mentioned that Its health care business is fastest growing by sales thus it is planning to heavily invest on products related to skin, wound healing and other infection prevention, the good news is 3M is going to start producing N 95 face masks at its Singapore facility in Asia by coming April, Spokes person from 3M said that it is planning to produce around 180 million masks annually to tap to the increasing global demand for N95 cap after H1N1 flu.........Waiting for the time when 3M is going to establish its India research center.

H1N1 News Update

Many Big pharma's like Sanofi, Baxter and GSK have signed contracts to supply H1N1 vaccines to Governments around the world. According to reports published in Bloomberg today GlaxoSmithKline has till now received 22 government orders for pandemic swine flu vaccine (Totaling 440 Million shots) from various government bodies and agencies. Now the race has just begun........Major phrama have already bagged the big deals but I am waiting for Indian companies to join the race as some time back I had published that many Indian companies like Cadilla and Panacea have already started working on development of their own H1N1 vaccine for supply to Indian government.

Pharma headlines...................

Today the Pharma headlines were………………

* French company Sanofi-Aventis, planning to launch a generic version of its own anti clotting blockbuster known commonly as Plavix, thereby helping it to combat the copycat drugs approved by European regulatory authorities.....

* On the Other hand Sandoz (Generic arm of Novartis) has got approval for its Biosimilar for Somatropin in Japanese market and according to company releases it is going to launch 10 generic drugs every year in Japanese market in the coming decade.....After Novartis I am expecting more news from GSK's generic arm.

* For the past 2 Quarter we have seen major M&A activity from Japanese end. Recently Koreans have been into many small size M&A activity , Today Arigene Co., Ltd. From south korea which is into related medical equipments business announced that it is planning to acquire Trimeris, Inc, USA, which is into viral infection treatment, Its drug FUZEON® a new class of anti-HIV drugs called fusion inhibitors, is already approved in U.S., Canada and European Union. The overall deal is for $81 Million. There is lot more M&A going to happen at Asian front :)

I am back with more pharma news :)

For past one week I had very busy schedule so was not able to blog for a while but now I am back with bang....Last week there had been many M&A in biopharma as well as pharma sector, though there were many small as well as big deals like Sanofi Aventis going for 1Billion mega deal for Fovea Pharmaceuticals, Google venturing into its first biotech investment in Monoclonal antibodies production and series on companies announcing there their quarter reports and conferences being scheduled.......CRO's around the world going for mergers and collaboration.....there is lot happening and this coming quarter I am waiting for more news from Bristol Mayer squib and Japanese giants :)