pharmaceutical trends Archives - Medical Design Sourcing

Zai Lab’s unified approach to tackling cancer, autoimmune, and neurological diseases

Zai Lab is a global biopharmaceutical company founded in 2014 and based in China and the U.S.. Led by Chairperson and CEO Dr. Samantha Du, the company now has more than 2,000 employees internationally.

Focusing on developing novel therapies for oncology, autoimmune disorders, infectious diseases, and neurological disorders, it has built a broad pipeline of late-stage drug candidates, five of which have been approved and launched in China. The company also has internal research and development capabilities to advance its discovery pipeline.

The company is strategically partnering with prominent biopharma organizations such as Amgen, GSK, Seagen, BMS, Mirati and Deciphera. Concurrently, Zai Lab is building a proprietary pipeline across therapeutic areas such asoncology, autoimmune disorders, infectious diseases, and neuroscience.

In this email Q&A, we heard from Josh Smiley, president and chief operating officer of Zai Lab, and Dr. Harald Reinhart, pre…

The balancing act of biotherapy: Be The Match BioTherapies’ Abby Waters on agility and beyond

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Professionals in the biotherapy world are engaged in a sort of balancing act, juggling the nuances of product development, complex science, leadership dynamics, and patient-centricity. In a recent interview, Abby Waters, Ph.D., senior manager of solution owners at Be The Match BioTherapies, opens up about her decade-long journey navigating these multifaceted challenges. From embracing agile methodologies to driving data-informed decisions, Waters shares insights on leading teams, prioritizing patients, and envisioning the future in this quickly evolving field.

In the interview — part of our Women in Pharma and Biotech series, Waters provided insights on an array of subjects, from adopting the IT-based agile framework to cell-and-gene therapy to the art of hiring and weighing hard and soft skills in the biotherapy domain. She also provided advice on approaching data-driven decisions, and offered per…

Novartis’s Sandoz spin-off and Sanofi’s portfolio slim-down reflect pharma push toward specialization

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Modern pharma: Evolving through specialized strategies

The pharmaceutical trend toward increasing concentration appears to be gaining momentum. On September 15, Novartis shareholders approved the company’s proposed spinoff of Sandoz, the generics and biosimilars unit. The company anticipates the deal to close in early October. Similarly, Sanofi is also taking a scalpel to its operations, offloading a selection of its central nervous system medications to Pharmanovia.

Sanofi, similar to several other of its pharma peers, is aiming to realign its portfolio, emphasizing areas where it can drive innovation and deliver robust growth.

Last week, Johnson & Johnson, for instance, announced a rebrand that traded its historic ‘Janssen’ pharma moniker for ‘Johnson & Johnson Innovative Medicine.’ The move is part of a broader initiative to priorit…

Top 12 reported events for Moderna and Pfizer omicron-targeting COVID-19 boosters

This colorized scanning electron microscope image shows SARS-CoV-2 (round blue objects), the virus that causes COVID-19, emerging from the surface of cells cultured in the lab. [Image courtesy of National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases]

With updated COVID-19 boosters set to launch in the near future and COVID-related hospitalizations on the rise again, scrutiny is on the rise of emerging variants and the benefit-safety profile of COVID-19 vaccines.

We performed a retrospective analysis of data from the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS), focusing on the period covering the launch of the bivalent COVID-19 boosters in 2022 to August 25, 2023. The data captures 15,592 reported events for the Moderna vaccine and 21,553 for the vaccine from Pfizer and BioNTech.

COVID-19 reports: Correlation does not equal causation

Both Moderna and Pfizer vaccine boosters have associated reports of …