Next week, BIO will invite biopharmaceutical industry experts to submit educational topic session proposals for the 2018 BIO International Convention in Boston, June 4 - 7. The 2018 call for sessions and speakers opens on Thursday, September 14, and closes on Thursday, October 12, 2017. As I have (once again) agreed to serve as a BIO educational program planning committee co-chair, I have a vested interest in its success. My goal in helping biopharma’s largest and most influential global event, is to assist in creating such a strong educational program, that when you see this year’s offerings you will deem BIO 2018 in Boston as a must attend. However, I need your help to pull this off. The only question is: Will your participation be active — or passive?
Forbes once called Merck’s Ken Frazier a “quote machine,” but I’d say David Hung is just as deserving of that moniker. I interviewed Hung, the new CEO of Axovant Sciences, at the BIO conference in June, and throughout our discussion I found myself smiling. Hung, who saw the company he founded, Medivation, be acquired by Pfizer for $14.3 billion, will be the subject of a Life Science Leader magazine exclusive feature in our October 2017 issue. During our conversation he provided a plethora of statements I found so memorable that I decided to put together a list of my top 10 favorites — listed in the order they occurred during conversation.
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.
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?
In July I had two interesting opportunities. The first was on July 12, 2017 when I attended the Partnering For Cures (Twitter hashtag #FCP4C) conference in Boston. The second took place on July 19, when I got to tour GSK’s vaccine manufacturing facility in Marietta, PA. And while you might not think that a biopharmaceutical conference and a manufacturing facility would have much in common, in actuality they do, as both are focused on delivering safe and effective, high-quality medicines to patients as quickly and efficient as possible. Here are some highlights from my recent experiences.
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.
As usual, the BIO International 2017 Convention was a top-shelf event. This year’s show theme was, “breakthroughs.” And while I didn’t see a single breakthrough therapeutic take center stage at this year’s event, there were still a significant number of them worth noting. For example, in the first can’t-miss session listed in my pre-BIO blog, attendance nearly broke through the walls — literally. Not only was this session standing room only, it was the first time I experienced a non-keynote/non-super session have to utilize an overflow room so attendees could watch via live video.
Drug Sales Reel Amid Probe Into Charities. This was the headline of Jonathan Rockoff’s June 12, 2017, Wall Street Journal article that points out how sales for two U.S. “blockbuster prostate-cancer drugs” (i.e., J&J’s Zytiga and Pfizer’s Xtandi) were down (i.e., 14 and 11 percent respectively) for the first quarter from a year previous. Apparently there are two contributing factors that explain this drop in sales — a charitable-giving federal investigation, and how the companies have responded to patients in need.
As we get closer to one of our industry’s biggest annual gatherings, the BIO International 2017 Convention in San Diego, June 19 – 22, I have begun to pin down my schedule for which educational sessions I plan to attend. For me, this has always been a challenge, as BIO has so much great educational content. And with many of the educational sessions overlapping, I find I have to pick and choose where I want to be, often with at least two options from which to pick.
On April 25, 2017, I posted a blog asking the question, Who Is The Biopharmaceutical CEO Of The Year. In the blog, I included a link to a short survey. Our goal was twofold: see if there was enough interest in continuing to pursue such an award, and generate an initial list of names that would be in contention. Thus far, 10 names have been submitted via dozens of submissions, but it’s too early for us to make any decisions or conclusions based on such a small amount of data.
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