All News

Table of Contents

Antiquated manufacturing processes cost pharma money-a fact widely known and accepted in the industry. At some facilities, rejected batches, rework, and lengthy investigations have become a way of life, and by some estimates can inflate production costs by as much as 10 percent. According to G.K. Raju, executive director of the Pharmaceutical Manufacturing Initiative at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, manufacturing consumes an estimated 25 percent of drug company revenues.

February 2004 CE.

February Table of Contents

With overworked execs and underfunded campaigns, it is hard to believe that the ad industry has the resources to improve its creativity while churning out campaigns better, faster, and cheaper. But this year?s Rx Club Awards winners show that a more sophisticated and risqué style is emerging?direct in message, clear on benefit, and confident in execution.

I'm running as fast as I can." That describes how many pharma executives see their work-as a high-stakes race. Just as competitive runners find that a coach can be a vital part of their success, many business executives are discovering the benefits of working with a professional coach to improve their leadership skills. The result has been a transformation in the way coaching is applied and perceived. Far from being seen as a remedial step for "fixing" executives who are performing below standard, it has become widely used as a way to make already-effective leaders even better and to move them to the next level of their leadership.

When Gary Cupit, vice-president of global business development and licensing at Novartis, recently told an audience at Columbia University that "we always cling to products a year longer than we should," he was referring to one of pharma's more pressing and expensive, if lesser-known, problems: failure to promptly pull the plug on unsuccessful pipeline projects. A drug in clinical trials burns about $30,000 a day. For compounds that never make it to approval, that adds up to a frittering of $11 million each.

The genomics revolution may not have ushered in the age of personalized medicine the way healthcare experts predicted, but innovative diagnostics keep pushing the industry toward the ideal of the "right drug for the right person at the right time. "One company that exemplifies that model is CeMines, a Colorado-based enterprise with an impressive, noninvasive cancer diagnostic in development. The product, which uses molecular fingerprinting to test blood samples, has had a 100 percent accuracy rate for every trial conducted. It not only determines-even in early stages-if a patient has cancer, but provides guidance for which type of treatment will work best.

January 2004 CE.

New rules of engagement can help pharma companies to overcome the paralysis of creative conflict.

In spite of pharmaceutical employers' best intentions to the contrary, sales rep compensation is being squeezed in a vise that is gradually narrowing the gaps between what top, average, and bottom performers are earning. According to the Hay Group's Pharmaceutical Sales Force Effectiveness Study, co-sponsored by Pharmaceutical Executive, reps in the 90th percentile are earning just 40 percent more than the average performer. This is not to suggest that reps aren't being paid handsomely (they are), but that the pay-for-performance model is showing signs of weakness.

In PE's December Pipeline Report, an unexpected Phase III candidate rose to the top. The drug: BioMarin's Aryplase. The reason for its success: an amazing turnaround job by chairman and CEO Fred Price. But Aryplase is not Price's first accomplishment at BioMarin, which was spun off from Glyko BioMedical in 1997. It is, in fact, only one of many that resulted from Price's efforts to jump-start a stalled company.

Think back: When did you first hear the phrase metabolic syndrome? When did it start to become part of your business and its plans?

Table of Contents

December 2003 CE.

Table of Contents

Much has been said about pharma's R&D lag, but a closer look at the candidates currently in Phase III shows that what the pipeline lacks in quantity it makes up for in quality. This Pharmaceutical Executive pipeline report identifies some of the top candidates in five categories: women's health, oncology, central nervous system (CNS), cardiovascular disease (CVD), and metabolic/ endocrine diseases.

When your father is Sidney Pestka, "the father of interferon," it's hard to grow up without learning something about the potent little protein that helps regulate the immune system. "I was surrounded by science my entire life," says his son Rob Pestka. "I worked in his laboratory. I published a paper together with him. " And so it seems only natural that one day Rob would become CEO of PBL Therapeutics.

November 2003 CE.

Erythropoietin is marketed by different companies under different names-Epogen, Procrit, Eprex, Espo, Epogin, Aranesp, and NeRecormon-so it has never made anyone's list of best-selling drugs. But EPO is likely to be the first molecule to reach the $10 billon dollar mark in annual sales. Pfizer's Lipitor (atorvastatin) and two biologic proteins, interferon and insulin, will be hot on its heels.

Say the word "anthropologist" and most people think of Margaret Mead studying mating rituals in New Guinea. But for pharma, the techniques of anthropology are becoming an important source of information about how patients actually use medicines and how they feel about their physicians, their diseases, and their post-diagnosis lifestyles.

Table of Contents

One of pharma's thorniest challenges is how to optimize the potential value of its R&D portfolio with limited resources. To address that, many pharma and biotech companies have begun to enhance their capabilities in the new discipline of portfolio project resource management (PPRM).

Many hospitalized patients, confronted with an immediate health threat and looking for ways to pass the time between visting hours, are prime candidates for health messages delivered through a unique medium: direct-to-patient (DTP) television networks. But there's a catch. Although such networks give pharma an excellent opportunity to reach a highly motivated audience with disease and treatment education and product promotion, the hospital-based DTP market is as risky as it is attractive.

Not long ago the average pharma development organization spent $100 to $200 million a year. It consisted of about 100 people working on only a half dozen compounds. Its leaders typically knew all their employees by name. There was a good deal of visibility within the organization: Managers could see from top to bottom and could make decisions aided by nothing but their own brains.

October 2003 CE.

Prevailing notions about PGx are often based on misconceptions. But in reality, the Technology plays a vital role in pharma's business today.

The next five years will determine whether pharma retains its position as the most profitable major industry. It will do so only if it succeeds in justifying its profit margins and the high prices that US consumers pay for its products. That will be tough. When Adlai Stevenson was running for president, an enthusiastic supporter gushed, "Oh, Mr. Stevenson, you will win the thinking man's vote.

Thanks to growth in international trade, rapid technological innovation, and a willingness to share intellectual property (IP), the number of corporate cross border alliances has grown steadily.

Table of Contents