2013

Stem cell-based therapies represent a potential pathway for a new era of 21st century regenerative medicine. In support of this new form of treatment, a global multibillion-dollar research endeavor is currently underway in an effort to establish a scie…

Technology has promoted global health. Yet advancing technology has also allowed physicians and trainees to cheat, and inappropriate experimentation with medical technology has resulted in study patient deaths. Further, journal editors have not made significant inroads in employing technology to identify dishonesty. Unfortunately, this continues to be strongly within the culture of the profession. Due to corruption of medicine, global health promotion will be severely retarded by falsified and suspect data that lower-and-middle income countries cannot afford to reproducethemselves and must rely upon for clinical decisionmaking. Further, clinical environments that facilitate dishonesty will result in poorer patient care. In addition, emerging markets rely on research to produce advanced therapeutics such as biosimilars that will be used by developed and developing economies, compounding the potential risks of dishonesty globally. By employing relevant antiplagiarism technology and accessing funding sources for all parties including authors, reviewers, and journal editors; “honesty” accreditation that includes mandated participation by journals; and external audits and whistleblowing of dishonesty, medical culture globally can move toward honesty and take advantage of technological evolution to promote global health.

This is the introduction piece for the 9th San Diego Health Policy Conference, with papers by Tom Kubic, John Theriault, Tim Mackey, Jim Balcius, and Bryan A. Liang.

Human Genome Science (HGS) aspired to dominate the emergent field of genomics by discovering expressed gene sequences and developing therapeutic and diagnostic products based on proprietary genes. While HGS’ accomplishments fell short of their own lofty expectations, by the time HGS was acquired by GlaxoSmithKline, the company had extensive intellectual property and had launched a product with >$1 billion market potential. Nevertheless, HGS’ acquisition price was less than the total capital investments in the company. This work examines HGS’ history and accomplishments in the context of the business plan described by the company at their IPO. We focus specifically on the company’s valuation over time, which was highly correlated with general market indices, but negatively correlated with metrics of technical or clinical progress. The history of HGS points to the challenge of accounting for the value created by a science-based business plan. Earnings-based metrics, present value calculations, and “fair value” assessments did not account for HGS’ progress in executing their stated business plan. This work highlights the critical need for accounting practices that credit value to the progress of translational science and enable investors to profit from such investments.

The recombinant drug industry is growing at almost 20% rate in India. The long term growth of this sector depends upon the innovation as well as competition and market. The structure, conduct and performance of firms in market plays a very important ro…

This paper is part of the free Open Access archive of the Journal of Commercial Biotechnology
Commercial biotechnology in Latin America: Current opportunities and challenges
Go to paperABSTRACT: The unparalleled growth of commercial biotechnology in…

This chart shows the companies with the successful drug patent challenges from last year. The most successful drug patent challengers

I will be helping judge the AUTM Venture Forum again this year. The competition features a $10,000 prize for the

This guest post is from the BiotechBlog Intern,  Fintan Burke. Fintan is a student at the School of Biotechnology at Dublin

This paper is part of the free Open Access archive of the Journal of Commercial Biotechnology
A brave new Europe with the introduction of the EU Clinical Trials Directive: Impact upon the pharma industry and academic research with special emphasis on…