The biotech sector managed to eke out a small gain in 2015 despite the turbulent capital markets for most of the second half of the year. Helping keep the industry above water was the stellar performance of 13 companies that saw their share prices double in 2015*.
It was a busy December for the FDA as it gave the green light to five more new molecular entities (NMEs), boosting the number of NME and new therapeutic biological products approved by the agency in 2015 to 45, an almost 10 percent increase over the 41 NMEs that were approved last year.
Included in BioWorld's list of the most impactful stories in 2015, which will be published later this month, is the expansion of the global activities in precision medicine. While the field has been growing for some time, boosted by cloud computing and big data analytics, it officially received its stamp of approval and funding boost in January following President Obama's launch of the Precision Medicine Initiative (PMI), a research effort designed to pioneer a patient care model to accelerate the shift to personalized medicine.
Included in BioWorld's list of the most impactful stories in 2015, which will be published later this month, is the expansion of the global activities in precision medicine. While the field has been growing for some time, boosted by cloud computing and big data analytics, it officially received its stamp of approval and funding boost in January following President Obama's launch of the Precision Medicine Initiative (PMI), a research effort designed to pioneer a patient care model to accelerate the shift to personalized medicine.
It has been a hectic year for Crispr Therapeutics AG, which is ending with a flourish following the announcement that Leverkusen, Germany-based Bayer AG is investing a total of $335 million in order to establish a long-term alliance that will leverage promising CRISPR-Cas9 gene-editing technology.
With only a few more trading days left in the year it looks like public biotechnology companies will eke out a small collective gain of about 7 percent – a far different scenario than they could have anticipated at the beginning of the year when the biotech sector roared into 2015 on a high, remaining a hot commodity among investors who continued to fuel its five-year bull run.
Cloud-based high-performance computing is beginning to prove its worth in drug development research. The next logical step is its application in modernizing the clinical trial process by making trial enrollment and management much more efficient.
Cloud-based high-performance computing is beginning to prove its worth in drug development research. The next logical step is its application in modernizing the clinical trial process by making trial enrollment and management much more efficient.
Biotech investors had a great deal to be thankful for heading into the Thanksgiving holiday. With just one month to go before biotech closes the curtains on another year, the sector appears to be back on track and stands poised to finish 2015 in positive territory, a performance which is much better than some pundits were predicting when valuations nosedived during August and September as the heated debate over drug prices got into high gear.
While the run rate for new drug approvals has shown some improvement during the past couple of years, with more than 40 new molecular entities being approved by the FDA last year, drug discovery and development still remains an ever-increasingly costly, time-consuming and risky undertaking.
