Can a biopharma company have a soul? If so, the soul should be one that endures. “The biology is the soul of our company,” says Robert Blum, president and CEO of Cytokinetics. “We have pioneered an area of biology — muscle activation — proven to offer a compelling pharmacology.
Oncology isn’t the only therapeutic area subject to the hyperbole of hope. It is just the most perfect example of hype, an all-too-common state of mind in the “cancer community.
Cynthia Schwalm, president, North American commercial operations for Ipsen, gives the backstory of what happened when this company decided to change its approach to the U.S. market.
ProMIS Neurosciences believes inaccurate targeting of mAbs is to blame, in fact, for lack of progress against Alzheimer’s disease.
As former chairman and CEO of Pfizer, Jeffrey Kindler dealt with the frustrating conundrum of ballooning R&D budgets tracking alongside plunging R&D productivity. Now as he leads this chronic pain biopharma startup, he has a whole new set of challenges.
As a trade journalist, I often face the challenge of relevancy. Is what I’m writing about really useful and germane to readers as members of a particular industry?
Outside skepticism about GeNeuro’s scientific concept has made fund-raising even harder than usual for a startup. But the Swiss company has found considerable support in Europe.
Astellas has placed a big emphasis on oncology this year, pointing to its many assets, particularly in targeted therapies that are later stage, but also focusing through partnerships on immuno-oncology (IO). A conversation with Drs. Steven Benner, head of oncology, and Peter Sandor, head of oncology marketing strategy, follows.
When I leave my writer’s lair and go out into the world, I feel like the tortoise in a race of hares. People move around me at the speed of light, most lost in their screens, smiling at machines.
When we started our series, “Combination Cancer Immunotherapy — A Virtual Roundtable,” in 2014, our basic assumptions were not the consensus view. We assumed immunotherapy, now more commonly called immuno-oncology (IO), would become the dominant form of cancer treatment and central target of academic and industry research in oncology. We assumed a single, backbone therapy would become the pillar around which combinations of therapeutics with complementary targets would form. And we assumed the IO field, especially in its combination approaches, would pose profound scientific and business challenges as it took over as the central focus of oncology in general. Our assumptions turned out to be correct. Now, all IO has to do is catch up with itself.
Frequency Therapeutics is an early-stage developer of small molecule drugs to activate “progenitor cells” and restore healthy tissue. Its lead program is in treating hearing loss by regenerating sensory cells in the inner ear, for which it is planning a Phase 1 trial to launch in mid-2018.
Takeda’s chief medical and scientific officer talks about R&D, business development, and partnering.
To heal the wounds — maintaining and restoring cellular homeostasis with novel secretomes.
We continue the story of Geert Cauwenbergh whose nearly 40 years in the industry included work with Paul Janssen as well as being a startup entrepreneur with RXi Pharmaceuticals.
