biopharma innovation Archives - Medical Design Sourcing

Big Pharma clicks soared, but new cell therapies made you buzz: What drove biopharma interest in 2023?

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The big Big Pharma names you couldn’t ignore

Despite biopharma’s 2023 layoffs and challenges, innovation won your clicks last year with over 130,000 of them on our Pharma 50 report alone. But while giants dominated, your clicks showed disruptive tech wasn’t far behind. The next-most popular article was a roundup of 100 trailblazing cell and gene therapy companies with more than 80,000 views. Other hits included companies putting AI in drug discovery and development, and the ever-popular biotech startup watch – proof that solutions, not just statistics, attract attention. Rounding out the top five was a roundup of biotech job cuts and openings.

2023 biopharma innovation in the spotlight on Linkedin

But over on LinkedIn, innovation was also a driver of interest. Topics on women’s health, such as Organon doubling down on women’s health, novel approaches to mental illness at…

A J&J veteran highlights listening to address overlooked maternal-fetal needs

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With nearly 20 years of experience at Johnson & Johnson, Cynthia Accuosti Jones now spearheads the company’s pioneering maternal-fetal medicine group tackling unmet needs in high-risk pregnancies. As vice president of global commercial strategy for autoantibody and maternal fetal health, she spotlights listening as the driver for patient impact. “You can’t have empathy if you don’t listen to people and it’s incredible how much people just need to be listened to,” Jones emphasized, underscoring the importance of addressing the often-neglected area of maternal health.

Jones’ longtime interest in healthcare stemmed from a desire to help people. She considered nursing but ultimately pursued finance and international business at Georgetown, building on childhood analytical skills tracking her father’s stocks. That experience piqued her interest in financial markets and data analysis. She…

Unlocking generative AI requires reshaping culture, operations, and talent dynamics

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In drug discovery and development, generative AI and natural-language processing (NLP) tools promise more than incremental productivity gains. For companies that can integrate such tools strategically into their workflows, the tools open the door to a fundamental rethinking of operational processes. For instance, generative AI tools can accelerate drafting of research articles, novel target identification, and the creation of SOPs for recipe and formulation. NLP, conversely, can mine unstructured scientific data and complex research papers. Because roughly 80% of healthcare data is unstructured, NLP promises to unlock previously inaccessible insights, transforming raw data into actionable knowledge.

But deploying such tools at scale requires a mix of strategic thinking, curiosity and new approaches to cultivating talent. As we enter 2024, life science organizations must rethink their approach to ad…

Gate Neurosciences takes on depression with event-driven pharmacology

From left to right: the NMDA and AMPA receptors transport calcium cations into neurons after being activated by the neurotransmitter glutamate and the GABA receptor (right) transport chloride anions after the activation by gamma aminobutyrate. [Adobe Stock]

Much of the world is grappling with a mental health crisis — with soaring rates of depression and anxiety. Last year, the startup Gate Neurosciences emerged with a novel approach. While the Carmel, Indiana–based company is focused on synaptic plasticity like many other contemporary CNS companies, it diverges in its strategy. Rather than using a traditional occupancy-based model, which intends to achieve therapeutic effects by ensuring the continued presence of the drug in the body and binding at target receptors, the company’s aim is to ensure that effects persist even after a drug is no longer biochemically active in the body

Gate’s approach to even…