Derek Lowe's commentary on drug discovery and the pharma industry. An editorially independent blog from the publishers of Science Translational Medicine. All content is Derek’s own, and he does not in any way speak for his employer.
My recent post on the Drugs for Neglected Diseases Initiative (DNDi) brought some emails from Robert Don at the organization. He has more details on the sleeping sickness project – pointing out, for example, that the contribution from Scynexis was not pro bono, as I’d assumed: We actually contracted a team of 10 chemists at… Read More
I’m conferencing today in Manchester, with less time to blog than usual. But I wanted to strongly recommend a couple of other posts this morning: first off, Bruce Booth’s on innovation and its flip side, exploitation, in the drug business. A good complementary post is this one at SlateStarCodex, which goes into detail, with great… Read More
Here’s a report looking at biopharma by country, and ranking countries based on how good an environment they provide for the industry. The three big criteria are how much their governments spend on R&D, specifically life sciences and medical R&D, how closely they regulate pharmaceutical prices, and how strong their intellectual proper… Read More
Here’s a useful perspective from Alex Tabarrok at Marginal Revolution: several recent studies have concluded that, over the last several years, generic drug prices as a whole have continued to decrease. That’s how it’s supposed to be: all those prescription drugs whose prices seem ridiculous are (eventually) doomed. They’ll… Read More
I wanted to update readers on Catalyst Pharmaceuticals, whom I first wrote about here. They’re the ones who have been planning 3,4-diaminopyridine (DAP), a therapy for a rare disorder called Lambert-Eaton Myasthenic Syndrome which is currently being provided at no cost, and run it through the FDA’s regulatory process so as to get market… Read More
Time to catch up briefly on one of everybody’s favorite drug companies, Valeant. Back in October, there was a lot of arguing going on about the company’s business model, and their apparent use of, well. . .creative techniques to make sure that as many prescriptions as possible were filled for their portfolio of very pricy… Read More
A number of people have sent along this article from The Guardian. It’s about Jamie Love, a campaigner for cheaper pharmaceuticals. It’s a long, well-written piece, and I’ll summarize it only by saying that Love is very much opposed to the patent system, is very much a fan of compulsory licensing, and is clearly very… Read More
Drug prices too high? Why not just have the state Attorney General’s office set them for you? That’s what I’m taking away from this story. Maura Healy, AG of Massachusetts, is firing a warning shot at Gilead over the pricing of their HepC drugs. Her office is apparently considering whether Gilead is engaging in an… Read More
Biocentury has a look at the issue of compounding pharmacies, which is an area that’s been getting a lot of attention in this era of steep rises in generic drug prices. (You may recall that the competition for T*ring’s Daraprim is coming from a company that’s making the active ingredient available to compounders). The recent… Read More
Here’s an article at JAMA that addresses the problem of off-patent (generic) medications in the US: they’ve traditionally been the cheapest in the industrialized world, but in recent years have been rising in price. And often spectacularly, ridiculously so. The area of concern has been the off-patent drug market with limited or no compe… Read More
