One might think that with the current white hot biopharma initial public offering (IPO) market – which has prevailed during the early months of 2014 – private company boards and senior management have been spending all their time mulling over whether they should follow in the footsteps of the 28 firms that already made this successful leap, collectively raising $2.2 billion in the process. Read More
SAN DIEGO – When designing phase II proof of concept trials, companies want to maximize the chance of seeing a signal. Avoiding so-called type III errors – trials that would have been successful but were never performed – leads to a "no drug left behind" mentality, Cong Chen, director of biostatistics and research decision science at Merck & Co. Inc. told the audience during a panel at the American Association for Cancer Research meeting last week. Read More
Autism is on the rise, for reasons that continue to baffle researchers. The growing prevalence – an estimated one in 68 children is affected with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), according to recent data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) – is all the more worrisome considering that most drug development efforts in autism have been dismal failures. Read More
