What if we paid professional athletes only when they won? What if spectators got their tickets refunded whenever the home team lost? That might make that $1,300 Super Bowl ticket a little easier to purchase. And, hey, perhaps that might assuage some of the crushing disappointment for Denver fans still bemoaning the Broncos’ embarrassing defeat. (Though, on second thought, maybe not. Broncos’ fans are pretty passionate and hard core.) But along those same lines, what if we paid for therapeutics only when they worked? That would keep the cost of health care from further spiraling out of control, right? That...

Who needs Black Friday and Cyber Monday, anyway? True biotech aficionados know they can find the perfect gift for everyone on their holiday list in BioWorld’s 7th Annual Biotech Holiday Gift Guide. Shoppers, start your engines. Personal Health Last year, biotech holiday lists – including ours – featured genomic testing. Thanks to the FDA, the popular 23andMe genotyping service has suspended health-related genetic tests. However, BioWorld Managing Editor Jennifer Boggs pointed out that you can still get your microbiome sequenced at ubiome, learning what bacteria reside in your body, comparing your microbiome to those of other individuals and visualizing yourself...

"If you plan to be around five or 10 years from now, you have to have a Chinese strategy." That poignant comment in a BioWorld Today article came from Joshua Boger in 2011. The founder and former CEO of Vertex Pharmaceuticals Inc., and now executive chairman of Alkeus Pharmaceuticals Inc., had just returned from China where Shanghai Syntheall Pharmaceuticals Co. Ltd., a manufacturing subsidiary of Wuxi Apptec Co. Ltd., is the manufacturing site for starting materials for Vertex's hepatitis C drug Incivek (telaprevir). A combined massive government investment, a growing appetite for capitalism, and a shift from pharmaceutical industry service...

As I write this, I’m sitting in the University of British Columbia/Vancouver General Hospital (UBC/VGH) Eye Care Centre, where my husband, Chuck, is completing post-tests at the conclusion of a six-month study on prosopagnosia, otherwise known as face blindness. The condition isn’t treatable with drugs – not yet, at least – but it’s nonetheless disabling, prompting researchers at several centers in North America and Europe to work collaboratively and seek to help patients carry on with their lives. Clinical studies of prosopagnosia have, so far, informed researchers more about the causes and structural manifestations of the disease than about potential...

Remember the heady days about eight years ago when Amgen Inc. and Genentech Inc., prior to its acquisition by Basel, Switzerland-based Roche AG, both vied for top spot in terms of market capitalization? At that time, both companies briefly commanded impressive $100 billion market caps and their collective valuation represented a significant chunk of the whole sector’s worth. Between then and now the industry took a nose dive in the wake of cratering global financial markets. As a result valuations declined and Genentech, now a unit of Roche, no longer factors into the industry’s current performance statistics. Well, thanks to...

I’m terrified of hospitals. Not so many years ago, this would have been an absurd remark. With doctors and high-tech medical care all around, a hospital seemed like one of the safer places in the world to be. But then, not so many years ago, age-related macular degeneration likely would have blinded many patients, as it did my late grandfather, pre-Macugen, pre-Lucentis. Things change, and not always for the better. The rise of resistant infections, especially the hospital-haunting and deadly methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) has kept drug developers scrambling for new weapons against this bug and others. Until lately, the...

What’s in a biosimilar name? That depends on whether the vial is half empty or half full. Seeing it as half full, many generic makers focus on the similarities between a follow-on and its reference biologic. Because of those similarities, they say biosimilars and their reference product should share the same international nonproprietary name (INN) – as is the practice with traditional generic drugs. That’s the argument the Generic Pharmaceutical Association (GPhA) made in the citizen petition it submitted to the FDA earlier this month. Used to cashing in on the success of a small molecule brand drug by sharing...

“Once you obtain your genetic information, the knowledge is irrevocable,” warn the service terms at saliva-testing firm 23andMe.com. The news wasn’t so bad, except for Alzheimer’s. Also, I’m sort of related to Stephen Colbert. Of course, 23andMe, of Mountain View, Calif., can’t predict your medical future with certainty, but, using a saliva sample, does uncover a wealth of personalized data on predisposal to diseases – more than 240 health conditions and more than 40 inherited illnesses – along with likely drug responses and ancestry details that go back thousands of years. Here’s the process: You sign up online and pay...

When it comes to the National Institutes of Health’s (NIH) funding for medical research, it’s not a matter of truth or consequences. It’s more like truth and unintended consequences. Cheered on by prominent researchers, the NIH has embarked on an all-out campaign to spread the word about the consequences sequestration is having on its ability to fund grants and the long-term impact those consequences are likely to have on the basic research that’s the foundation of drug discovery. The $1.6 billion the NIH expects to lose from its 2013 fiscal budget because of the sequester will translate into a loss...

Our recent analysis of biotech’s second quarter performance showed, for public biotech companies at least, their bull run that began more than 18 months ago is showing no signs of slowing down. Since the beginning of 2012 the Nasdaq Biotechnology Index (NBI) has risen in value by 75 percent. The NBI tracks about 124 companies and to be eligible for inclusion, they must have a market capitalization of $200 million and have an average trading volume of 100,000 shares per day. To remain in the index, the company's market capitalization must be $100 million, with an average of 50,000 shares...