Economics

Manufacturing Insights: Interviews from BWB 2018 Highlight Perspectives on Streamlining Manufacturing Timelines

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Addressing manufacturing and technologies strategies to accelerate market entry is one of BPI’s highlighted themes for 2019. In partnership with our conference colleagues in Informa’s KNect365 division, this already has been a shared theme, reflecting the general goals of the industry and related advice from its regulators. BPI’s summer 2018 preconference ebook included interviews by Dan Stanton (editor, BioProcess Insider) with speakers previewing their talks for the BPI Conference in Boston on 7 September 2018. Two of those conversations focused…

February 14, 2019

Aspects of Acceleration: Biomanufacturers Need Smart Strategies to Speed Products to Market

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No matter what the industry, it’s widely accepted that slow-moving companies give their nimbler competitors an advantage, allowing them room to dominate the market even if their products are not superior. “Me-too†products and their sponsors often are seen as followers rather than leaders — even if they offer improvements over what is already available. Fast movers are flexible and adaptive to a dynamic business environment. They capitalize on opportunities and navigate risks and challenges by responding quickly to changes…

February 14, 2019

Monetizing Innovations in the Biopharmaceutical Industry

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The biopharmaceutical industry has seen strong growth over the past 15 years, with a compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) of 6.7%. However, if you look at that growth in five-year intervals, it becomes apparent that the rates have begun to decline in many countries. Companies have withdrawn somewhat and put initiatives into place to curb further increases in the cost of drugs. The CAGR fell from 8.7% for the period of 2002–2006 to only 3.1% for 2012–2016. In our yearly…

February 14, 2019

Worldwide Biopharmaceutical CMO Capacity Analysis

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Contract manufacturing organizations (CMOs) are a core part of the biopharmaceutical industry, with commercial manufacturing making up about a third of marketed products. Here we examine worldwide CMO biopharmaceutical manufacturing (bioprocessing) capacity, concentrating on “mainstream†CMOs — defined as those providing primarily mammalian cell culture or microbial fermentation services for manufacture at any scale of proteins and antibodies. This analysis follows our recent article examining worldwide bioprocessing capacity status and trends (1). Survey Methodology The 2018 15th Annual Report and…

February 14, 2019

Partnerships in Immunotherapy for the Future of Cancer Treatment

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Immunotherapy seeks to harness the power of our human immune system to fight disease. In this rapidly evolving field, collaboration among different stakeholders is essential to bringing new treatments to market. Patient advocacy groups, researchers, hospitals, manufacturers, and government entities all are working together to translate promising new research into life-saving products. Types of immunotherapy include monoclonal antibodies (MAbs) and antibody derivatives, checkpoint inhibitors (immune-modulating proteins), cancer vaccines, T-cell therapies, and cytokines — so the approach involves a range of…

February 14, 2019

Building a Bridge Across the “Valley of Deathâ€: Strategies to Help Support Technology Development

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On Thursday 6 September 2018 at the annual BioProcess International Conference in Boston, the first “Technology Round Robin Featuring Six Innovative Bioprocess Technologies†was presented in an interactive session with attendees as active participants, asking questions and engaging in conversation with the six featured entrepreneurs. Detailed below, this session was a culmination of several steps in an overall strategy for some of the companies participating. To fully appreciate the launch of new technologies into the bioprocess arena, you first must…

December 14, 2018

Elucidation: Changes in VA Healthcare Pose New Implications for Drug Companies

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Veterans of the US military still struggle to access healthcare despite the 2014 congressional passing of the Veteran’s Choice Program (VCP), a US$10 billion-dollar “fix†that allows qualifying veterans to see community physicians who have contracted with the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) to provide care. Veterans who enrolled in VCP to avoid long wait times at department medical facilities still have faced month-long delays before seeing a doctor, according to a 2018 GAO report. Investigators have found that the…

December 14, 2018

Partnerships in Immunotherapy: Working Together to Take Cancer Treatment to the Next Level

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Biopharmaceuticals are a particularly complex expression of medicine — and immunotherapies perhaps even more so. As treatments, these products themselves often also need “partners†of a kind: e.g., radiation/radiotherapies, traditional MAbs, and chemotherapies. Just as this field of endeavor requires the input and expertise of many different disciplines — from medical researchers to process engineers, clinicians to business leaders, and market experts to policy makers — this discussion of the topic of partnerships in immunotherapy brings together different experts in…

November 27, 2018

BioProcess International Conference and Exhibition 2018 Postevent Report: Key Insights, Highlights, and Take-Away Messages

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From the global shift in demographics to increased efficiencies in chromatography media, change is constant within the bioprocessing industry and a major reason delegates flock to the annual BPI Conference and Exhibition. As a place to get an overview of the hot topics affecting this industry, the meeting brings together key aspects of bioprocessing — therapeutic modalities, cells, expression systems, upstream production, downstream processing, development, and manufacturing — with digital integration and the increasing importance of analytics. Add in macrobusiness…

October 22, 2018

Proposing a Systematic QbD Approach Toward Validated Guidelines for CMO RFI and RFP Processes: Biopharmaceutical Vendor Evaluation and Selection Minimum Standards (BioVesel)

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Three major concerns predominate biotechnology executive management in organizations of all sizes and above all other risks: finance (or its absence at critical moments), technological performance, and failures in coordination. Some business functions, such as human resources (HR), are effectively siloed horizontally and therein are more likely to be susceptible to only one of those risks (1). Few functions are subject to this trinity of risks simultaneously; all functions may be exposed to failures in internal coordination, and a smaller…

October 15, 2018