Biotech Blog

My most recent editorial in the Journal of Commercial Biotechnology, “The impact of the global financial crisis on biotechnology development,” examines the response of governments around the world to their investments in biotechnology and healthcare innovation. It is a theme that I also raised in the Scientific American WorldVIEW. The bottom line is: despite economic [...]

Here is a recent keynote I gave for the Delaware Valley Innovation Network. The group is working on coordinating the activities of community colleges — and other parties –  between the adjacent Delaware, Philadelphia, and New Jersey regions. My objective was to use case studies to show that drawing circles around regions to count combined [...]

After months of preparation, the Scientific American worldVIEW project has launched.
I had the pleasure of serving as lead editorial consultant of this project, and my mission was to cut through the marketing messages and develop a coherent measure of biotechnology innovation on a country-by-country basis. You can hear me talk about the project and some [...]

I’ve got two appearances at BIO related to the Scientific American worldView project:
On May 18th I’ll be participating in a press conference at 1pm in room A340
On May 20th I’ll be participating in a roundtable at 3:30 in Thomas B. Murphy Ballroom I, Bldg. B, Level 5.
Hope to see you all there!

In 2005 India mostly strengthened their patent laws to meet international norms, with the distinct requirement that new drug products must “differ significantly in properties with regard to efficacy.” This requirement for a significant improvement in efficacy only applies to drugs — not to other patentable inventions like pens, car engines, etc., and is of [...]

The Scientific American WorldView project, where I’ve been serving as lead editorial consultant, is ramping up for its May 20th launch at BIO 2009. One of the objectives for the project was to put marketing-speak aside and objectively measure biotechnology innovation progress around the world. Going beyond gross regional measures, we compare individual countries to [...]

I’ll be giving a talk at the Kogod School of Business on Tuesday February 24th on “Drug Development – Balancing National and Commercial Needs”. The basis of the talk is that countries need access to medicines, foreign currency, and tax revenues, while drug developers need profits (or else they will cease to exist). I’ll be [...]

Emergent biotechnology companies are very reliant on capital, often having less than two years capital on hand. Like other businesses with strong needs for cash, one would expect biotechnology companies to be adversely effected by a dearth of capital.
The biotechnology financial crisis and request for pass-forward tax breaks have been covered elsewhere; I’ve been looking [...]

I’m working on an International Biotechnology ranking and comparison for a well-known publication, and am looking for data sets comparing biotechnology activities in different countries as well as interesting anecdotes about successes/failures/challenges encountered in developing biotechnology in different countries as well between countries. If you’ve got comparative data sets or interesting anecdotes, please drop me [...]

A lot of people have been asking my opinion on when a concise generic biologic regulatory pathway will emerge in the United States, and I give them all the same answer: Later.
In my opinion complex regulatory schemes are not areas in which the United States can effectively lead. Why not? Because the size of the [...]