ARTICLES BY LOUIS

• Will Pfizer-Allergan Inversion Lower Drug Costs?

  11/24/2015

  Remarkably, all the noise swirling around the Pfizer-Allergan deal has knocked off the national stage (at least for the moment) the one specific question that has so occupied health care news throughout 2015: the price of drugs. “Will this move by Pfizer help to lower drug prices?” If so, who’d care so much where Pfizer makes its corporate bed?

• The Global CMO Wars: No More Us Vs. Them (Part 2)

  11/23/2015

  Rudyard Kipling’s early-1900s “border ballad” is often quoted: “OH, East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet.” How long will we carry on our border wars between outsourcing service providers in the East and West? Representatives from pharma, bio and service providers recently worked through this battle in a public forum.

• The Global CMO Wars: No More Us Vs. Them (Part 1)

  11/18/2015

  “So you hire three FTEs to perform some route scouting or further route development, scale up, kilo lab work, or other services. For the year in India it’ll cost you around $150,000. In the U.S., it’ll be around $650,000. That’s a delta of $500,000. How do we consider these numbers? How should we think about this?” 

• FDA Should Make “Quality Metrics” Public

  11/10/2015

  Whether or not you agree with the FDA in its determination to collect “quality data” directly from all drug manufacturers – including CMOs – if the agency moves forward, the real question is this: Should that data, and any rating the agency assigns to individual manufacturing plants for quality standards or “quality culture,” be kept internal at the FDA or made public?    

• GSK's Discovery Fast Track Contract Starts With Super-Moon Eclipse

  10/30/2015

  “Even the heavenly bodies aligned perfectly. Our partnership with GSK was announced the day of the super-moon total-lunar eclipse.”

       -- Richard Leduc, professor, Department of Pharmacology-Physiology, assistant  vice-dean for knowledge transfer, Université de Sherbrooke, Sherbrooke, Québec

• Who Wants To Work At A CMO Anyways?

  10/23/2015

  Are graduating students and newly trained professionals aware there is an AMRI as well as an Amgen, a Cambrex as well as a Celgene, or a Lonza as well as a Lilly? Even if they are, why would they select the service providers? And why is it positive for for the biotechs and pharma companies if they do?

• Service Provider In “Arbitrage Opportunity Of The Century”

  10/9/2015

  A brand-name outsourcing provider plays a role in an historic “arbitrage opportunity.” “I  truly believe these deals represent the most interesting models – China capital and U.S. technology – for the coming decade,” says  Tiecheng “Alex” Qiao of Ambrx Inc.

• The Paradox In Measuring Your CMO

  10/6/2015

  Something Denise McDade of Capricor Therapeutics said during a session at Outsourced Pharma West stuck in my mind: “Metrics are fundamentally important in measuring and managing any relationship, but there’s a paradox when it comes to outsourcing.”

• Pfizer Says Science First In Alliance Management

  10/2/2015

  Effective alliance managers with an underlying scientific fortitude allow for the growth of outsourcing, without a corresponding growth in the number of alliances, says Pfizer’s Sylvie Sakata.

• Don't Sing The BioPharma Supply-Chain Blues

  9/29/2015

  I’ve got 6 shipments in limbo; 47 days on a tarmac; 58 borders in Europe … And they’re taxing me at every step I take …