Although they’re the stuff of science, statistics too often lack the power to move us. After all, they’re just numbers. So when companies like Dendreon Corp. and Seattle Genetics Inc. price their cancer treatments at nearly $100,000 or more, we may arch our eyebrows, but we don’t really think about the impact those prices will have on the individual faces and names behind the numbers. Instead, we wonder, as reported in BioWorld Today, why more patients don’t take advantage of promising drugs like Dendreon’s Provenge. Unlike statistics, faces and names have stories that can bring us to tears, that make...

After six years in biotech PR and five years as a biotech journalist, I have both written and received a heckuva lot of pitches. I know how hard media pitching can be, and I always try to take the time (when you’re not calling me on deadline) to give PR pros feedback on why we will or won’t cover their news. Here’s the stuff I find myself explaining most often: Read our news. This might seem obvious, but you have no idea how many times people call me to pitch news we’ve already covered in that morning’s paper, or they...

What do macroeconomics, creativity and upfront payments have in common? They’re all featured in this week’s issue of BioWorld Insight! I’m going to put on my long-discarded marketing hat for a minute and say I think we put together a really interesting issue of Insight this week. Of course as the Insight editor, I always think we’ve put together a really interesting issue . . . but just check this out: Our cover story (Macro Woes Could Impact Biotech Financing, M&A) looks at how the S&P downgrade, increased unemployment, decreased consumer spending and other macroeconomic issues could trickle down to...

Free speech. Most of us take it for granted. Unless you’re a drug company, that is. Since the FDA doesn’t trust biopharma when it comes to drug promotion, the agency believes that, as the watchdog of public health, it’s justified in curtailing drugmakers’ First Amendment rights. The FDA has put teeth to its leash on speech by issuing warning letters, which can block pending drug approvals in the U.S. and abroad. In what it considers more egregious cases, the agency turns speech violations over to the Justice Department to prosecute. As we reported in BioWorld Today, several companies, rather than...

Working in the biotech industry can be a bit like staring into a microscope: you become totally absorbed in the things right in front of your face – your stock price, your clinical progress, your balance sheet – and events in the outside world fly by before you’ve had a chance to look up. I can tell you in my sleep which biotech companies have recently won FDA approvals, but ask me which U.S. politicians have declared themselves presidential candidates and you’ll get a deer-in-the-headlights blank stare. Which is why I enjoy getting the chance to write articles that broaden...

This week’s report of remissions in three advanced leukemia patients after immunotherapy has generated quite a lot of excitement in the media – which, in turn, has led to some backlash amongst the twitterati and in the blogosphere, noting that two complete remissions plus a partial one don’t make a blockbuster. Or anything, really, that will be broadly useful within the next few years. Mainly, when I look at these controversies, I am grateful that I write for such a smart audience. If you are reading this blog, chances are that you work in the biopharmaceutical industry – and if...

This week’s report of remissions in three advanced leukemia patients after immunotherapy has generated quite a lot of excitement in the media – which, in turn, has led to some backlash amongst the twitterati and in the blogosphere, noting that two complete remissions plus a partial one don’t make a blockbuster. Or anything, really, that will be broadly useful within the next few years. Mainly, when I look at these controversies, I am grateful that I write for such a smart audience. If you are reading this blog, chances are that you work in the biopharmaceutical industry – and if...

What's causing drug shortages in the U.S., and is it a matter of mechanisms of control or methods of drug production? In 2010, there were shortages of 178 drugs in the U.S., a record-high level. Many drugs on the 2010 list are still unavailable, and the number is growing. It has tripled in the last six years, according to the FDA. Currently there are about 246 drugs in short supply, and that number has risen steadily since 2006. Severe drug shortages are endangering cancer patients, heart attack victims, accident survivors and others. Many people hold the FDA largely responsible for...

All those warnings about price pressures and reimbursement woes – they didn’t come from Chicken Little. The sky really could be falling for drugmakers that insist on pricing their products based on what the market used to bear. Rather than making the same old arguments about the cost of drug development, biopharma needs to understand that today’s market simply can’t bear the prices of yesterday’s bestsellers. Yes, a lot of factors are involved in drug pricing, and a lot of middle men add to the costs here in the U.S. But when it comes finger-pointing time, drugmakers tend to be...

As a biotech junkie, I’ll admit I was shocked to the core by Dendreon Corp.’s second-quarter admission that prostate cancer vaccine Provenge (Sipuleucel-T) is thus far not succeeding commercially. (See BioWorld’s news bulletin for details.) The most shocking part? Analyst and investor assumptions that Provenge’s poor performance is due not to reimbursement hurdles, as Dendreon claimed, but to an underlying lack of demand. Doctors and patients don’t want to use the product. Come again? Are you serious? Provenge is the first and only therapeutic cancer vaccine ever to gain FDA approval. I don’t have to tell anyone in the biotech...