New Celgene CEO Mark Alles talks about the daunting task of taking over at this biopharma behemoth and explains the company’s concept of a “leadership incubator.”
Maybe we should keep calm and breathe easy on Brexit. After all, the process of the UK exodus will take years, and will first require a parliamentary vote approving the move.
In June, the Obama administration’s Office of the Actuary issued the Medicare Trustees report, which determined “The Hospital Trust Fund is not adequately financed over the next 10 years.” The trust fund will be depleted by 2028, two years earlier than last year’s estimate.
There are several general principles that can help accelerate clinical development, beginning and ending with a focus on getting the drug to the patients that need it.
“When you’re working for other companies, there are two disadvantages — one, you don’t have full control of your destiny; two, the work tends to come in peaks and valleys.”
“We knew to compete in immuno-oncology — and to be successful — we had to fundamentally change our model.”
As NIH funding has decreased and the cost of conducting biomedical research has gone up, highly trained scientists with potentially groundbreaking ideas are left with no outlet to commercialize their idea.
About 50 percent of all Phase III trials fail. That is an expensive problem for the pharmaceutical industry, as a 2014 study by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services estimated the average cost of a Phase III trial to be $20 million.
As the biopharmaceutical industry is becoming more comfortable with the principle of calibrating its efforts with a focus on patients, one question is beginning to float to the top: What strategy would generate a maximum amount of patient-centricity? In recent decades, focus groups, advisory boards, and various patient-engagement initiatives have emerged and informed mainly post-approval activities. Patient leadership councils (PLCs) are now starting to take patient engagement to unprecedented levels. Patient influence is forecast to rise.
As head of global information for a major biopharmaceutical company, I try to anticipate what might be the next service line that we should provide to our internal customers and what might be the next big thing in terms of information provision, rights requirements, and the like. To ensure that my corporate information center runs optimally, there are five areas of improvement I continue to focus on, which not only keeps my team current, highly-skilled, collaborative and empowered, but also demonstrates a positive ROI for our parent organization.
As part of the selection process of CMOs and strategic suppliers, three issues related to operations deserve particular attention: Compliance, Consistency, and Resilience.
Millennials, the single largest demographic in the workplace today, are often derided as lazy, disrespectful, and needy. They’re also criticized as being so addicted to technology that they email and text message information that should be communicated face-to-face to supervisors and coworkers.
When Mark Alles came into pharma about 30 years ago, Celgene’s current CEO says basic life and biological sciences were going through somewhat of an evolution built upon by prior knowledge.
Since the war on cancer was first declared, nearly half of those diagnosed today will be cured. Despite this incredible progress, cancer continues to gain ground, recently becoming the number one killer in 22 U.S. states.
At a recent conference I overheard a VC admit that a few years ago if a biotech startup approached their company with an idea, no matter how good the data might seems, if it involved Alzheimer’s disease, his company was not interested in backing it.
When conducting interviews my natural curiosity can result in a surplus of interesting content that often doesn’t fit with the overall theme of the final published article. When situations like these happen, I often proactively create articles for an online section called — From The Cutting Room Floor. One of my favorite examples of a cutting room floor article being able to provide valuable insight came from an interview with George Golumbeski, Ph.D., SVP of business development at Celgene. During the conversation I asked how a formally trained scientist moved into the area of business development. While his response of it being “one of the best business decisions he ever made” was fascinating, it wasn’t a fit with the overall M&A theme of the July 2015 cover story — even as a sidebar.
As I sat down to write this blog, I was struck by the idea of why certain things become popular or gain legitimacy. Malcolm Gladwell describes the magic moment when an idea, trend, or social behavior crosses a threshold and begins to spread like wildfire in his book, The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference. Still, it seems rare to witness such an event actually taking place and even more difficult to predict these “moments.” For example, most of us probably never envisioned the 2014 A.L.S. ice bucket charity challenge becoming such a meteoric sensation. But while recently watching the Olympics, I think I did notice something that I anticipate will be the next big health craze — cupping.
