ARTICLES BY LOUIS

• Pharma Asks: Who Manages What At Advancing Service Providers?

  10/27/2014

  Antonio Magnelli has a new SVP role in Europe. Patheon and all stripes and sizes of pharma providers are on the move. Like sharks, stop swimming and they won’t survive. Sponsors need to pay attention to changing leadership positions as well as to who is managing their projects at their outsourcing partners. 

• An Antibody Drug Conjugate In Every Garage

  10/22/2014

  The conference took on an old-time carnival atmosphere. At the end of one long day, I imagine a barker with megaphone among the booths: “Step right up. Get your very own look at an antibody drug conjugate platform. Don’t be the last in your neighborhood without an ADC in your garage.” Or maybe it was “in your pipeline.” It definitely was ADCs, though.

• Brand Equity Lessons At CPhI Worldwide From “Rx India”

  10/16/2014

  Six exhibition halls in Paris Nord Villepinte, France, encased city-like ecosystems (or gigantic beehives); the conference in total so big it was hard to plan a strategy. It was a battle of outsourcing provider brands, and differentiation was difficult.

• A Global Forum For Outsourcing (With Simple Objectives)

  9/24/2014

  Perhaps the best advice I’ve heard regarding industry conferences is twofold: first, make sure you attend, and second, keep your objectives for attending simple.

• Serial Entrepreneur Points To Initial Funding Sources For Biotechs

  9/24/2014

  Kevin Judice lists himself on LinkedIn as “Entrepreneur.” Perhaps he has to; there just isn’t enough space to include the three companies he recently started and at which he concurrently is employed as CEO or CSO.

• "KPharma” Moves Beyond Asian Comparison To Global Pharma Industry

  9/22/2014

  I’ve enjoyed visits to Boryung, Dong-A, Green Cross, Hanmi, Il-Yang and Yuhan.

  Do you recognize these names? How about LG Life Sciences and Samsung Biologics? These are some of the companies clustered in and around Seoul, forming South Korea’s advancing pharmaceutical industry. If they aren’t all global brands yet, chances are more will be in the near future.

  Encouraged by highly publicized government initiatives and funding, South Korean pharma (KPharma, for short), already playing a strategic role in the development of global biosimilars, is moving well beyond its myopic domestic and generics focus to new drug discovery and global healthcare markets.

• Unifying Theory Of Outsourcing From Pharmatek President

  9/16/2014

  Timothy Scott, co-founder and president of Pharmatek Laboratories, a CDMO focusing on services for small molecules of peptides, has put it all together. Not quite Einstein's quest for a theory of everything, but his synthesis of the outsourcing industry is alluring. Here’s why.

• GSK's Real Value In Outsourcing To China And India

  9/9/2014

  There is nothing “virtual” about GSK’s Virtual Proof of Concept outsourcing program.

  VPoC is as real as Shanghai and Hyderabad. As a drug discovery engine, it is as tangible as compounds progressing through the clinic and to late-stage development. According to Allen Oliff, senior vice president at GSK’s Alternative Discovery and Development, and founder and leader of VPoC, it is also the most cost-effective outsourcing on the globe.

  Located with his team at GSK’s King of Prussia, PA, facilities, Oliff speaks quietly but with a determination for straightforward explanation regarding the reality in the world of outsourcing as he has experienced it.

• Relationships A-Buzz In Pharma Outsourcing: Is It About Customer Service?

  9/5/2014

  The provocative question of the week: Could pharma’s apparent pursuit of deeper relationships in the outsourcing industry limit competition, increase pricing and dampen customer service?

  After a period of shared suffering through a global economic malaise, big pharma budget cutbacks and a lack of VC for biotech customers, business in 2014 is good at drug discovery, development and manufacturing providers. You can see it in industry and company earnings reports. In fact, providers seem to be gaining a new (and coveted) centrality in the entire biopharma industry.

• More To Report From Australian Life Sciences -- And Some Best Practices From The BioMelbourne Network

  9/2/2014

  Australia just keeps making news.

  It was again named one of the “happiest countries” in the world by the OECD. Scientific American Worldview ranked it fourth in 2014 in the global biotech industry, a one-year vault from seventh. For the fourth year in a row, the Economic Intelligence Unit annual Liveability Survey called Melbourne “the best city in the world to live.”

  In a recent article on Melbourne-based Fibrotech’s acquisition by Shire, founder and CEO Darren Kelly iterated the value of starting his company within that nurturing life-sciences location. As might be expected with all the rosiness above, providence provided an opportunity to follow-up on that part of the Oceanic continent-country. I met with Michelle Gallaher, CEO of BioMelbourne Network, just prior to her moving from that role to start her own life sciences company in Melbourne.