Ben Comer

Orphan drugs were given short shrift in PharmExec’s 2014 Pipeline Report, but a couple of pipeline candidates targeting small populations did make the list, and are expected to earn big dollars in the next few years.

Across a constellation of categories, bright new drugs are moving into position. The pharma model may have changed, but companies are keeping their blockbusters.

At the conclusion of the Cleveland Clinic's Medical Innovations Summit each year, 10 innovative technologies are unveiled before the audience, and designated as new and revolutionary tools for the treatment of disease and disability.

Arena Pharmaceuticals’ and marketing partner Eisai’s Belviq – the first FDA-approved drug to treat obesity in over a decade – is making progress with payers and beefing up sales forces to target primary care physicians. DTC support began in September.

Predictive analysis has been used to great effect in the finance, tech, retail, and telecoms industries. Can it also improve decision-making and health outcomes in life sciences?

Planning to submit to the FDA today? Think again. The agency put a forced pause on key services and functions – and furloughed 6,620 FDA employees – as a result of last night’s government shutdown.

At Duke University’s Fifth Annual Technology and Healthcare Conference, Eric Siegel, founder of Predictive Analytics World and executive editor of the Predictive Analytics Times called new predictive analytical tools “inevitable” disruptions to the way physicians make treatment decisions and patients receive care.

Post Exubera, inhaled insulin has been an uphill struggle with regulators.

Already approved in 22 countries, GW Pharma’s Sativex product, if approved by FDA, would become the first prescription drug derived from raw cannabis to enter the US market.

Are electronic health records a viable channel for engagement? Ben Comer reports.

Novo Nordisk’s SVP of national diabetes sales speaks with PharmExec about a new field force technology initiative, implications of the Sunshine Act, and why Victoza sales won’t slow down anytime soon.

Speaking at CBI’s Sunshine & Aggregate Spend Conference in Washington DC on Tuesday, Shantanu Agrawal, director, data sharing and partnership group, center for program integrity, CMS, said the agency hired IT company CGI to build the software platform to be used for publishing pharma payments to physicians under the Sunshine Act provisions, now re-branded “open payments.”

If you no longer had to worry about the Anti-Kickback Statute, Stark Law or the Sunshine Act, would your professional marketing strategy change? Probably, if you like making money.

In the spirit of lawn chair cogitation and hammock-spun reverie, Pharm Exec invites you to submit your own verses-pharma-related, of course-to be published on our website in late August.

Eight months into the launch of its first approved drug – Iclusig (ponatinib), a small molecule therapy indicated for two rare forms of leukemia – Ariad Pharmaceuticals’ principal founder and CEO Harvey Berger says doing it all, from discovery to global commercialization, is the company’s path to sustainability and the way to take on Big Pharma.

Scientific opinion has special protection under the First Amendment, but does that give pharma a free pass to BYOD – build your own dataset – publish a peer-reviewed article based on the data, and then promote it for competitive advantage?

Pharma and physicians worry about getting sunburned by the Sunshine Act.

Dr. Richard Gliklich, president of Quintiles Outcome and a professor at Harvard Medical School, highlights the most prominent post-approval issues and risks coming out of this year’s Post-Approval Summit, held on May 7th-8th.

Led by two New Yorkers with a mindset that marries novel scientific insights to the processing power of novel technologies, Regeneron's success is a revolutionary challenge to the industry status quo.

Project Data Sphere aims to liberate clinical trial data sets from industry and academic vaults, in an attempt to catalyze cancer research and discovery.

US-based Bayer Healthcare Pharmaceuticals, as its executives were quick to point out, has now received three new approvals for cancer indications in the last eight months

During the Rutgers Business School’s annual healthcare symposium, an FDA official encouraged industry to put its drugs on the reviewing table and be prepared for good news.

A night of comedy in support of a chronic disease.

People tell you who they are, but we ignore it – because we want them to be who we want them to be. – Don Draper

Do Big Pharma dollars make physicians lousy caregivers?

The Office of Prescription Drug Promotion (OPDP) is reorganizing its two primary advertising review divisions – professional and consumer – in an attempt to stay in line with the silo-breaking, multi-channel promotional output pouring in from pharma.

If a patient or physician encounters pharma-created content that doesn’t pop with relevance or utility, it doesn’t matter how multitudinous the channels are that carry it.

In 2012, Merck's diabetes franchise became the highest-selling product family in its 122-year history.

During his fifth State of the Union address, President Obama struck many familiar chords – including a line about ending certain subsidies to pharmaceutical companies – and emphasized, repeatedly, the need to get things done on the policy front.

Good science can’t be rushed, even when the lives of patients hang in the balance. But regulatory science, and its relationship to a drug’s commercial success or failure