Patent Law

By Dr Natalia Dadivanyan, Segment Marketing Manager, Malvern Panalytical  Small molecules can face big challenges  Despite the emergence of, and excitement around, advanced therapeutic modalities, traditional small molecule pharmaceuticals still occupy a significant and steadily growing share of the market. A recent report indicated the current market size to be ~$166 billion, and a 5% compound […]

Michael Frisby, Partner at Stevens & Bolton LLP, examines where legal disputes are likely to occur within the pharmaceutical industry.  The current economic environment has fuelled fears of recession and with it a rise in disputes. But where are disputes likely to arise for life sciences businesses and what can be done?  Issues within the […]

DDW Editor Reece Armstrong takes a look at the recent Covid-19 patent battles involving key players in the pharmaceutical sector.  There’s no doubting that when the time came for the life sciences industry to step up during the Covid-19 pandemic, it delivered. From diagnostics to PPE and eventually the launch of Covid-19 vaccines – within a never-before-seen […]

Sphere Fluidics expands commercial operations to increase supply of Pico-Surf surfactant for droplet microfluidics. Sphere Fluidics, a company commercializing single cell analysis systems underpinned by its patented picodroplet technology, today announced investment in the production and supply of its proprietary biocompatible surfactant, Pico-Surf™, for reliable and highly stable droplet generation and processing. Sphere Fluidics will […]

By Dr Steve Arlington and John Wise As part of its mission to help members anticipate and prepare for changes in the pharmaceutical industry, The Pistoia Alliance has developed a research paper which sets out to consider what the life science, biopharma R&D and healthcare ecosystem might look like in 2030, in particular how the […]

Genetically-Engineered Models: The Value of Precious GEMs By Dr Megan M. MacBride Genetically-engineered animal models (GEMs) are critical tools for drug discovery and development, but intellectual property (IP) concerns can complicate access. As pharma and biotech increasingly outsource R&D activities to universities, careful scrutiny is required to ensure adherence to IP restrictions on research tools […]

Integrated Platform Drug Discovery and Development Companies – Part 1 By Dr Urban A. Kiernan and Dr Stephen Naylor Technology was lauded as the saviour of the drug discovery and development (DDD) process during the late 1990s. A myriad of independent companies developed and offered ‘innovative’ tools, technologies and platforms (TTPs) to pharmaceutical companies in […]

Disruptive Approaches To Accelerate Drug Discovery and Development (Part 2) By Dr Anton Fliri, et al. Part 2: Emergent intelligence, a new paradigm for drug discovery. (You can read part 1 of disruptive approaches to accelerate drug discovery and development linked here.) The staggering clinical trial failure rate of experimental drugs indicates that despite huge […]

Disruptive Approaches To Accelerate Drug Discovery and Development (Part 1) By Ibis Sanchez- Serrano, Dr Tom Pfeifer and Dr Rathnam Chaguturu This article is part 1 of 2, and covers tools, technologies and the core model of disruptive approaches to accelerate drug discovery and development. Tesla intends to implement and practise an ‘open source’ philosophy […]

By Dr Richard Shute There is no doubt that the interest and hype around blockchain or distributed ledger technology (DLT) builds daily. The explosion of articles and books recently is testament to this. But what is a blockchain and how might DLT impact healthcare, Pharma and R&D? Running through the profusion of publications on blockchain […]

New Approaches to Sample Identification Tracking and Technologies for Maintaining Stored Sample Quality By Dr John Comley Safeguarding the quality of stored samples (both compounds and biospecimens) must be the driving ethos in compound management stores and biorepositories. Yet there are few innovations in available sample storage technologies that can help them easily identify poor […]

A Strategic Vision For 21st Century Drug Discovery By Dr Wayne Bowen, Dr Giles Sanders, Dr Andreas Werdich, Dr Brian Warrington and Dr Elizabeth Farrant Delivering genuine therapeutic innovation is more challenging and complex than ever. Despite major scientific breakthroughs and technological advances leading to a greater understanding of the aetiology of diseases, it is […]

Automated Liquid Handler Vendor vs Third Party Plastic Company by Dr John Comley Competing for the disposable pipette tip business. Users of automated liquid handlers today invariably have a choice – obtain disposable pipette tips from the original instrument vendor or purchase a ‘compatible’ product from a third party plastics manufacturer or lab supplier. Increasingly, […]

By Dr A Roy, Prof B Patwardhan and Dr R Chaguturu Modern drug discovery approaches take too long, are too expensive, have too many clinical failures and uncertain outcomes. There are many reasons for this unsustainable business model, but primarily, the approaches are not comprehensively holistic. Secondly, none of the pharmaceutical companies openly share the […]

Therapeutic Drug Repurposing, Repositioning and Rescue Part IV: Financial model and analysis By David M. Kauppi and Dr Stephen Naylor There is a growing consensus that Drug Repurposing, Repositioning and Rescue (DRPx) impacts all stakeholders involved in the therapeutic drug sector. In part, this is due to the fact that the pharmaceutical industry accrues ~25% […]

The California Institute for Regenerative Medicines Human iPSC Initiative By Dr Thomas J. Novak This article discusses large-scale generation of patient-derived induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) to accelerate the understanding of disease biology and drug discovery. In 2012, the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM) announced its Human iPSC Initiative, an ambitious effort to generate […]