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August 2008
An antidote for pharma’s malady
    R&D, Advantage Business Media
Becoming more fuel efficient
    R&D, Advantage Business Media
Can engineers build esteem?
    R&D, Advantage Business Media
Can you see it?
    R&D, Advantage Business Media
Change is inevitable
    R&D, Advantage Business Media
How long can the records keep falling?
    R&D, Advantage Business Media
Keep Big Brother out of my car
    R&D, Advantage Business Media
OMG! Another ice age is coming!
    R&D, Advantage Business Media
One step closer
    R&D, Advantage Business Media
R&D lost in fray
    R&D, Advantage Business Media
Two Types of Games
    R&D, Advantage Business Media
Waiting for the train
    R&D, Advantage Business Media
 
July 2008
A glimmer of hope
    R&D, Advantage Business Media
A Moon with a View
    R&D, Advantage Business Media
Another risk of cancer?
    R&D Daily, Advantage Business Media
Cholesterol drugs for children
    R&D, Advantage Business Media
Data Big Gulp
    R&D, Advantage Business Media
EUV may prove irresistable
    R&D, Advantage Business Media
Global warming affects our health
    R&D, Advantage Business Media
How much do you care about sleep?
    R&D, Advantage Business Media
Loss of nerve?
    R&D, Advantage Business Media
NASA at 50
    R&D Daily, Advantage Business Media
Please don’t Title Nine science
    R&D, Advantage Business Media
Privacy is overrated
    R&D, Advantage Business Media
Technological warfare
    R&D, Advantage Business Media
The classroom of the future
    R&D, Advantage Business Media
The Electric Option
    R&D, Advantage Business Media
The Golden Apple
    R&D, Advantage Business Media
 
June 2008
Blade runner
    R&D, Advantage Business Media
Blind Faith Digital Data
    R&D, Advantage Business Media
Crime-solving technology
    R&D, Advantage Business Media
Gene mission accomplished…for now
    R&D, Advantage Business Media
Global heat
    R&D, Advantage Business Media
Hard times in Motown
    R&D, Advantage Business Media
Is it all in our genes?
    R&D, Advantage Business Media
Is it safe?
    R&D, Advantage Business Media
Let’s really support education
    R&D, Advantage Business Media
Long-term positive outlook
    R&D, Advantage Business Media
Pisa’s leaning tower safe for 300 more years
    R&D, Advantage Business Media
Replacing soldiers with technology
    R&D, Advantage Business Media
Rolling down the same track
    R&D, Advantage Business Media
Supercapattery. Where can I get one?
    R&D, Advantage Business Media
The allure of IP
    R&D, Advantage Business Media
True collaboration
    R&D, Advantage Business Media
U.S. high-energy physics needs help
    R&D, Advantage Business Media
What’s in is already out
    R&D, Advantage Business Media
Wi-Fi on wheels
    R&D, Advantage Business Media
 
May 2008
An electric world
    R&D, Advantage Business Media
Another CR for research?
    R&D, Advantage Business Media
Cytometry is having its day
    R&D, Advantage Business Media
Explore More
    R&D, Advantage Business Media
Genetic testing: too much of a good thing?
    R&D, Advantage Business Media
Industrial designs and accidents
    R&D, Advantage Business Media
Jurassic Park in Australia?
    R&D, Advantage Business Media
Natural disasters: now on YouTube
    R&D, Advantage Business Media
Research models are changing
    R&D, Advantage Business Media
RF agriculture for water’s sake
    R&D, Advantage Business Media
Silver lining in gas prices
    R&D, Advantage Business Media
Space junk
    R&D, Advantage Business Media
The complexity of science
    R&D, Advantage Business Media
The ebbing tide of outrage?
    R&D, Advantage Business Media
The Energy Dilemma
    R&D, Advantage Business Media
Where are those robots?
    R&D, Advantage Business Media
 
April 2008
A bump in the road
    R&D, Advantage Business Media
A new leaf
    R&D, Advantage Business Media
Are we looking the wrong way?
    R&D, Advantage Business Media
Are we ready for the shutdown?
    R&D, Advantage Business Media
Back in the game
    R&D, Advantage Business Media
Bad blood
    R&D, Advantage Business Media
Bio this and bio that
    R&D, Advantage Business Media
Bringing fun into science
    R&D, Advantage Business Media
Do clothes make the man?
    R&D, Advantage Business Media
Earth Day: another inconvenient truth
    R&D, Advantage Business Media
Evolving models
    R&D, Advantage Business Media
Funding disparities
    R&D, Advantage Business Media
FutureWorld
    R&D, Advantage Business Media
Invasion of the body snatchers
    R&D, Advantage Business Media
Life is precious, handle with care
    R&D, Advantage Business Media
March Madness without the madness
    R&D, Advantage Business Media
Nursing an eco-headache
    R&D, Advantage Business Media
Proceed, but with caution
    R&D, Advantage Business Media
Serious endeavors
    R&D, Advantage Business Media
The Business of Disaster
    R&D, Advantage Business Media
Unknown futures
    R&D, Advantage Business Media
What’s the risk?
    R&D, Advantage Business Media
 
March 2008
A military presence
    R&D, Advantage Business Media
America’s love affair
    R&D, Advantage Business Media
Analytical instruments: recession-proof
    R&D, Advantage Business Media
Body art goes hi-tech
    R&D, Advantage Business Media
Can you hear all of us now?
    R&D, Advantage Business Media
Drugs in the water - why worry?
    R&D, Advantage Business Media
Global warming? Bring it on
    R&D, Advantage Business Media
Good Night Hawk
    R&D, Advantage Business Media
He is now free to wander the universe
    R&D, Advantage Business Media
Inevitable impacts
    R&D, Advantage Business Media
It’s really up to us
    R&D, Advantage Business Media
NASA helps the blind see the cosmos
    R&D, Advantage Business Media
Nuclear Transformations
    R&D, Advantage Business Media
R&D Memories
    R&D, Advantage Business Media
Racing to the future
    R&D, Advantage Business Media
Second nuclear age
    R&D, Advantage Business Media
Surgical breakthrough helps man face life
    R&D, Advantage Business Media
Technologies at PITTCON
    R&D, Advantage Business Media
The state of science news
    R&D, Advantage Business Media
Time and time again
    R&D, Advantage Business Media
Where’s the water?
    R&D, Advantage Business Media
 
February 2008
Biofuel debate heats up
    R&D, Advantage Business Media
Bridges need ideas, too
    R&D, Advantage Business Media
Chasing next-gen Wi-Fi
    R&D, Advantage Business Media
DARPA Advances Artificial Intelligence
    R&D, Advantage Business Media
Evolution—just a theory?
    R&D, Advantage Business Media
Fighting for engineers
    R&D, Advantage Business Media
Global Agbio
    R&D, Advantage Business Media
Google Health–your medical history for your eyes only?
    R&D, Advantage Business Media
IAFIS Spawns Privacy Debate
    R&D, Advantage Business Media
Policy Changes
    R&D, Advantage Business Media
Profits and R&D
    R&D, Advantage Business Media
Rain, Rain, Go Away
    R&D, Advantage Business Media
Seeing Without Eyes
    R&D, Advantage Business Media
Short Fuse on Climate Change
    R&D, Advantage Business Media
Spare Parts
    R&D, Advantage Business Media
Tata Nano: tiny car, big implications
    R&D, Advantage Business Media
Techno Slowdown?
    R&D, Advantage Business Media
Technology enables the reflexes of a Jedi
    R&D, Advantage Business Media
The Biotech Steamroller
    R&D, Advantage Business Media
The Energy Debate
    R&D, Advantage Business Media
 
January 2008
A Global Climate
    R&D, Advantage Business Media
Algorithm Translates Pooches’ Bark
    R&D, Advantage Business Media
Energy Independence Demands Innovation
    R&D, Advantage Business Media
Get Involved !
    R&D, Advantage Business Media
Is Dolly coming to dinner?
    R&D, Advantage Business Media
Is the lead out?
    R&D, Advantage Business Media
Tea, Earl Gray, hot, por favor.
    R&D, Advantage Business Media
The Commercialization of Space Flight
    R&D, Advantage Business Media
Winning at R&D
    R&D, Advantage Business Media





Editor's Take
Paul Livingstone: Senior Editor, R&D Magazine
An antidote for pharma’s malady
Aug. 27, 2008

Does anyone really understand big pharma? I’m sure many do, but to me, an outsider mostly interested in the technologies used for the basic R&D of the drugs in question, I’m struck by how the industry seems to thrive on insatiable momentum.

For the last year it seems, stock analysts have been waving caution signs in front of investors about the inability of pharmaceuticals to develop new drugs to replace those that pass along to the generics market. As generics take over the marketplace, the big dogs like Sanofi-Aventis, Merck, GlaxoSmithKline, Pfizer (it’s amazing how many of them spring up isn’t it?) must get new drugs approved as soon as possible. Why? Well, development costs are spectacular and the investments must pay.

These days, the U.S. Patent Office and the Federal Drug Administration are sometimes considered the toughs that put the choke hold what used to be a lucrative product avenue: apply for a patent, file continuations on the patent, conduct clinical trials, wait for FDA approval. But the approvals aren’t coming along like they used to, thanks to heightened concerns over drug safety. And the U.S. Patent Office is tired of spending time dealing with continuation filing. They’ve got a hard enough time dealing with a record number of patent filings of all kinds.

So then, it’s a grim spectacle and it gets worse when one takes into account the sheer portability of a drug product, which seems tailor-made for exploitation via an online black market. More than 3,000 online sellers of major pharma products have been identified. So lucrative are these fake pharmas that the practice has been dubbed “brandjacking”.

Without a constant flow of product pouring through the drug pipeline, big pharma’s thirst is never quenched. So where do they go? The answer is biotechnology, and through a number of promising new therapeutic innovations—from imaging systems to targeted nanoparticle drug delivery tools—big pharma has moved away from what was once a realm of high-profile IPOs to a wave of high-profile M&As and licensing agreements.

It’s an impressive adaptation that has kept the ball rolling for these companies even in the face of economic gloom.

And it’s been good for science in general. Biotech firms that might never have attracted necessary investment in a time of evaporated capital now have a cash cow ready and willing to get it hands on any product, as long as its one they can market and sell quickly.

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