Pharmaceutical Executive-12-01-2007

Science is the lifeblood of pharma, of course. But these days, science isn't just what you produce in your own labs. It's what you can license, buy, partner on, or gain through acquisition. Which means that, increasingly, deals are the lifeblood of pharma.

Getting innovative drugs into bodies just got a whole lot more interesting. Here's how the delivery biz is keeping up with pharma's R&D.

One of industry's main complaints is that delaying the introduction of new medicines is a particularly simple way of saving money

In August, eMarketer reported that Internet ad sales had officially displaced radio ad sales, nabbing the slot of fourth-largest ad medium. That was a huge blow to radio, which receives a sizable chunk of ad dollars from the pharma industry. Now pharma marketers have a new option-ReachMD, a 24-hour satellite radio station that plays content targeted at doctors.

You couldn't call it a gusher, but the pipeline has still has some life in it, and important new therapies are working their way toward approval. Have we turned the corner? Judge for yourself, with the help of this guide to 61 of the best new products in development.

There are plenty of new vaccines on the market, but for patients to get maximum benefit from them, payers and even physicians need to rethink their roles in prevention.

The ultimate goal is for the medical system to develop new evidence as a natural by-product of delivering appropriate care

The proof is in the metrics. Last June, MarkMonitor sifted through 60 million e-mail messages and billions of Web pages to get a handle on how six major brand-name drugs were being touted and sold on the Internet. In the process, it found nearly 3,200 online pharmacies selling those drugs, according to the Summer 2007 MarkMonitorBrandjacking Index. But only four-count 'em-of these e-stores carried the respected Verified Internet Pharmacy Practice Site (VIPPS) accreditation.

It's that time of year again, when Santas everywhere take stock of nice and naughty in order to fill stockings-and magazines make up their lists of hits and has-beens.

There was a large minority of physicians who said they did, in fact, favor a DTC moratorium of some length. So the question is, why didn't it happen?

For several decades, pharma got the message that promotion could make consumers want to use new drugs. The system didn't work with Pfizer's Exubera. That's surprising news, but is it bad news?

A crush of Phase III failures triggered an R&D turnaround at AstraZeneca