Biotechnology is an idiosyncratic industry in which some executives can stake their careers on the pursuit of orphan drugs that, at best, will offer only limited opportunity for corporate profits and investors returns, while addressing the usually unmet needs of a narrow patient base. Other biotech execs pin their aspirations to the old-school home-run approach of developing a blockbuster drug to address a prevalent indication such as diabetes, and then basking for the next decade in the blockbuster revenue it generates. Either way, success in biotech is a conceded longshot. And success is usually considered to be more of a...

A string of first-ever events for Russia, including its official admittance to the World Trade Organization, plus committed government support to build a biopharma industry means the nation once known as the Kremlin may be in need of a more modern nickname as it transforms from an emerging market to one that could compete alongside the U.S., Japan and Europe.

Emerging market nations may be the all the rage in biopharma, and there are many countries that aspire to achieve that strategic level, but the Russian Federation wants to be more than just another BRIC in the wall.

Aug. 5 was International Forgiveness Day, and the founding organization of this annual effort, Worldwide Forgiveness Alliance (WFA), says in its mission statement that a goal is to promote and publicize the research findings that show forgiveness creates better health, abundance, greater optimism and lessens depression, stress, illness and disease. It also deems forgiveness as the greatest healer of all, able to impart more lasting, happy, supportive relationships. Well, that statement’s certainly applicable in biopharma – particularly in M&A transactions, inasmuch as the pardon-begets-profit model can be observed whenever a hostile takeover finally closes and the executive of a formerly...

If the big pharmas are indeed dinosaurs, they have learned to do what their predecessors could not: survive! Pharma may be prehistoric in terms of age compared to biotech, but it maneuvers more like a velociraptor than lumbering brontosaurus, as it commonly consumes everything in its path that can impend, contest or abet its dominance. Likely, 100 years from now, pharma will still be standing and bio-who? will be so assimilated into the DNA of pharma that its individuality is what will be extinct. Increasingly, pharma is obliging all of us to disregard the biotech industry as a standalone entity...

NEW YORK – Regulators are endeavoring to take steps to boost the prospects for small companies to partake in the initial public offering (IPO) market, but more can be done to help not only companies going public today, but those that went public in the pre-healthcare reform era and that have been burdened and are struggling with the side effects of overregulation for years, according to someone the SEC actually listens to.

In the U.S., it costs about $15,000 to $20,000 and can take up to three years to process a biotech patent application. The time frame for the process in the BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India, China) nations is comparable to that, but the costs are generally a lot less, and those nations also are taking resolute measures to dispel any apprehension, as well as any external challenges – such as theft-by-illegal-generics and corruption – that foreign-based drugmakers may perceive, or fear, to be an issue.

For BIO 2011, BioWorld published a list of overused BioCliches to shun, and I was pleased to observe that attendees and speakers must’ve taken notice and avoided using them at BIO 2012 this year. However, since the urge to use buzzwords will never die, we should at least regenerate the list every now and then before the catchwords become so stale they wind up in the dictionary and your parents are using them. Since we made a weekend beeline from BIO 2012 to return to all corners of the globe, I offer some new words to kick off the bio-summer...

BOSTON – Is it practical to still designate China – a market that is closing in on Japan as the world's second-largest pharma market – as a potential market? Or regard Russia's biopharma industry status as an emerging one, when its clinical trials infrastructure is rated in the global top five by the FDA?