Biopharma is in for a transformational year in 2016. Lawmakers are clamoring for drug price reform. Patients are protesting for faster FDA approvals. Patents are under fire from value-seeking hedge funders. And the industry’s least-welcome spokesman is live-streaming the whole thing.
This year, some of the fundamental pillars of the industry suddenly seem vulnerable. The rise of biosimilars is poised to cut into pharma’s cash reserves, while the once-reliable demand for biotech IPOs has all but dried up. What makes a drug approvable is the subject of a newly heated debate, while the financial wizardry that once made drug companies a sure bet has come under intense scrutiny.
We’ve put together a list of the people in and around biopharma who are poised to play major roles in the industry’s evolution. Some are recent hires hoping to rescue moribund giants, while others are long-tenured veterans trying to steer their firms into brighter futures.
Each is facing a make-or-break 2016 with wide implications for the drug business as a whole.
> Read the full report on the Fierce Biotech website
By Damian Garde
Source: Fierce Biotech
CureVac and the University of Texas’s MD Anderson Cancer Center have announced a co-development and licensing agreement to develop novel messenger ribonucleic acid (mRNA)-based cancer vaccines. The strategic collaboration will focus on the development of differentiated cancer vaccine candidates in selected haematological and solid tumour indications with high unmet medical needs.
FUJIFILM Corporation is planning to invest $1.2 billion to expand the planned FUJIFILM Diosynth Biotechnologies manufacturing facility in Holly Springs, North Carolina, US. This news follows the organisation’s announcement of a $2 billion investment in the facility in March 2021. This additional financial boost totals the investment to over $3.2 billion, FUJIFILM confirmed.
Sanofi’s global restructuring and downsizing is now fully underway, with layoffs stretching to the company’s Belgian offices. Belgian newspaper De Tijd reports that 67 employees have been laid off at a site in Ghent and 32 jobs are on the chopping block at Sanofi’s Belgium HQ in Diegem.
