CRO's .....

During my initial college days I was fascinated by the terms Oracle clinical, SAS, clinical trials........I used to wonder if I could anytime be part of any clinical research organization so to fulfil my goal I did my certificate course in clinical research from Pune University in Jan 2008....I did that course to get an overview of clinical research in India....but did not join any CRO but became a Business development manager of my company........But after finishing that course last year from than on I have been following the trends in clinical trial industry in India .......Some analyst in some papers have recently predicted that in some years CRO business in India will be worth more than $ 50 Billion...........what ever may be the value in coming years but this pharma service industry is growing at the rate of more than 10% annually in India......What I have observed is in just a span of 20 years we have more than 100 big n small CRO's in India.....and the count is increasing day by day :)….Jai Hoo CRO’s

Pfizer........

Pfizer as a company has always fascinated me; while I was doing my B pharmacy summer internship in Organon (India subsidiary of Akzo Nobel) in 2000 that year Pfizer’s name was published in all the news papers as it had then acquired world’s second most giant Warner Lambert. Then after my B Pharmacy completion I was selected as sales representative for Pfizer East zone in India but i quit before my training was going to begin in Mumbai as later i went on to pursue my PG diploma in Bioinformatics but still Pfizer is my fascination....so later on till date I have been following Pfizer's news updates regularly....and what I have observed till date is that Pfizer from early 1950's to this time has been the most active company is merger's and acquisitions and also in giving pink slip's to employees to maintain its liquid cash flow...Yesterday the news was Pfizer from year 2005 to till date has given around 30, 000+ pink slips to its employees but this is not a very new phenomenon with this company as Pfizer after Every Big merger or acquisition has been carrying out this process of giving pink slips for past 40- 50 years.

Oral Insulins.....

Insulin was first derived and used some 87 years ago by Banting and MacLeod who later on were awarded the Nobel Prize for Medicine in the year 1923. Then after 56 years Genentech ( Now part of Roche) one of the Pioneering Biopharmaceutical company of that era developed world’s first Human recombinant insulin whose production rights it later on sold to Eli Lilly in 1982, thus human insulin, or Humulin, becomes first recombinant DNA drug approved by FDA. Year 1985 saw the launch of Insulin pens, then later long acting insulin derivatives and Insulin inhalers....Last week India based Firm Biocon (Leading Biosimilar/Enzyme company) said that It is going to launch its oral insulin pill IN-105 in Indian market by next year and by 2011 worldwide.....Many have tried venturing into oral insulin therapy domain.…..But at this point the question which comes to my mind is will these Oral insulin pills be as effective as regular insulin injections???....Shall these drugs be blockbuster drugs in the coming years??

Market Watch-China-India and South east Asia ...

For the past two years I have observed that Top 30 Pharmaceutical companies are pumping heavily there cash in India, China and South east Asia region, Astra Zeneca has research centre in India for more than 15 years and in china like wise Novartis has one centre in Singapore for Malaria Research and has declared that it is going to pump around 1 Billion in China for establishment of its largest pharmaceutical research centre in Asia. Like wise Bristol Mayer Squibb had signed deal with Biocon last year and the Biopharma research group has started it's function in Bangalore this year and in Gurgaon where I have been working for sometime we have GSK Research centre and Merck clinical report division.....we can now think in the line that within 5 years Asia will be the hottest destination for Pharma and Biopharma research :)

Two vet players to watch...........

Sometime back Pfizer got approval of vaccine candidate for canine and the news is that German major Boehringer Ingelheim has recently acquired Fort Dodge Products from Pfizer. Ingelheim will acquire the Duramune line of vaccines for dogs with rest of the drugs in the line...........and Pfizer is shifting its focus on Animal genetics and bio pharmaceutical development for Animal health

Systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) ...........

Systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) therapy had been a major challenge for many pharmaceutical companies and research institutes not only in Unites states but also in India, According to WHO reports around 5 million people are affected world wide. At present steroids and some immunosuppressant are used for first line of treatment and some companies are targeting for protein based products too, Some of the companies working in this segment includes BioMarin and Roche and partner Biogen Idec, last month at one end news was that La Jolla pharmaceutical was forced to liquidate this august as its key lupus drug Riquent which was in Phase III failed in the key trial....and today the good news is that US based Human Genome Sciences (HGS) with is collaborator GSK has successfully developed lupus drug BLISS-76 which in combination with other drug had shown good results in Phase III trial....It is said that BLISS-76 will be first of its kind in this therapy segment.......

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?