Aging facilities is a trendy catchphrase that has taken hold in the biopharmaceutical industry the past few years. While most of us might think we understand intuitively what the words mean, perhaps we don’t. To that end, let’s dispel a myth right away.
Biopharma executives have warned they need more biologics development and manufacturing capacities, particularly in North America. They haven’t been howling at the moon. Four announcements – within two days of each other – offer a sign of relief. And Amgen has provided Outsourced Pharma with its first public estimate of costs for one of those facilities.
There has not been much discussion about how biosimilars contribute to or will impact innovation — outside of helping the healthcare system afford costly novel therapies. I found my interest in this question sparked upon reading a recent headline, "Biosimilars: The Cure for Sky-High Drug Prices Or A Stake In The Heart Of Innovation?"
Last week, I published the first installment of a three-part roundtable discussion highlighting which 2017 trends/occurrences were most notable to the members of Biosimilar Development’s editorial advisory board. In addition to discussing 2017’s impact on the future of the industry, these experts also shared their thoughts on what to expect in 2018.
These top five events reflect the steps the numerous industry stakeholders are taking to build what they hope will be a biosimilar friendly framework in the U.S. Though a number of these developments could bring positive implications for the biosimilar industry moving forward, several of these have raised a number of questions and concerns.
Experts from Adello Biologics, PA Consulting Group, Momenta Pharmaceuticals, and Avalere Health, share which trends and challenges they’re watching closely, along with how the industry could “break from tradition” in the next few years.
Aging facilities is a trendy catchphrase that has taken hold in the biopharmaceutical industry the past few years. While most of us might think we understand intuitively what the words mean, perhaps we don’t. To that end, let’s dispel a myth right away.
In a previous article, we wrote about the increasingly data-driven nature of the life sciences industry. This article explores some of these concepts in more detail.
Biosimilars were touted as a tool for payers to gain savings in specialty markets, but a recent survey by Avalere of the top 25 payers in the U.S. (about 189 million covered lives) using publicly available coverage policies found that biosimilars are commonly subject to step-through polices, including those that require the patient to “fail” first on a branded product, and only then will the payer cover a biosimilar of that same branded product (i.e., the biosimilar’s reference product). Policies like this may be why although the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) originally estimated a 10-year decrease in federal spending of $5.9 billion attributable to “follow on biologics”/biosimilars in 2009, it is estimated the actual savings have only been 8 percent of that amount (approximately $241 million). So what market access issues do biosimilars face in the U.S., and where could we go from here?
Shortcomings in data governance/data integrity and are a prominent feature in drug GMP warning letters over the past three years. FDA inspections also focused on contracted services. Additional areas were the subject of FDA investigator attention in CY2017 but may have been overshadowed by these two. This article explores several of those other areas.
Continuous improvement in data integrity can advance a firm on the journey toward a mature culture of quality, particularly through the implementation of QA on the shop floor. Batch record review (BRR) and product disposition are often complicated by data integrity issues and poor data quality.
The biomanufacturing industry is undergoing a major shift, from single-product processes and stainless steel infrastructure to flexible, multi-product facilities using single-use technology.
Commercial, manufacturing, and supply aspects in the biopharmaceutical industry can all be managed in order to mitigate risk. This white paper focuses on how a structured and transparent risk management process can be an ideal way to align the needs of patients with drug manufacturers and their suppliers, regulators, investors, and employees. Read on to learn more about guarding commercial interests, building and managing manufacturing capacity, and preventing supply disruption, and how these things can impact managing risk in biomanufacturing.
Despite their potential to increase the efficiency healthcare, autologous cell therapy treatments present significant challenges to most companies when it comes to development and manufacturing.
This article captures high-level learning about the use of SUTs in biopharmaceutical manufacturing that can be applied to CGTs, with a special focus on connection technologies.
For many companies, flexibility, scheduling, and facility-size reduction are the key drivers around the attention given to modular facility design for biomanufacturing facilities.
This article explains how using an Octet-based Fc receptor panel may help developers achieve a faster assessment of monoclonal antibody functionality, well before the final molecule is selected.
Through the implementation of automation, data management, and analytical technologies, pharma has the opportunity to breathe new life into a number of areas of the biologics drug development process.
