While reducing prescription drug prices won’t fix the overall growth in health care spending in the U.S., bringing those prices down is a top priority for most Americans heading into this year’s midterm elections. There’s a reason for that. Because of copays and coinsurance, those prices cut directly into the pockets of more Americans than any other health expense. And unlike health care costs that are hard to segregate in hospital and doctor bills, drug prices – at least the list prices – are front and center these days in headlines, congressional rants and presidential scoldings. Many biopharma companies didn’t...

Thanksgiving doorbusters. Check. Black Friday blowouts. Check. Small business Saturday, Cyber Monday, Giving Tuesday. Check, check, check. It's only Dec. 1, with the major holidays some two weeks or more ahead, and major advertisers would have us believe we’re already shopped out. But the intrepid elves at BioWorld, along with some loyal readers and followers, have lined up fun selections for everyone on your list with our 11th annual Holiday Gift Guide. Heidi Chokeir, managing director at Canale Communications Inc., called the Foldscope kit “an AMAZING gift for the budding scientist in people’s lives.” Larger kits are already sold out...

Dirt. Excrement. Glass. Hair. Insects. Mold. Rodent infestation. Scouring pad fibers. Unknown particulates. They’re words too often mentioned in FDA warning letters that describe manufacturing conditions for supposedly sterile drugs. A few years ago when I was a cancer patient hooked up to an I.V. drip for three to four hours every two weeks, I found reading those warning letters a horrifying experience. With a cocktail of generic and brand drugs coming from who knows where being pumped into the port resting a few inches from my heart, I cringed at the thought of what might be entering my vein....

The right hand not knowing what the left hand’s doing. Robbing Peter to pay Paul. Talking out of both sides of the mouth. . . . They’re all clichés that aptly describe how the U.S. Congress too often works. Especially when Congress insists on knee-jerk reactions to plaster complex problems with superficial solutions instead of conducting thorough investigations into the root of a problem, followed by a well-reasoned corrective and preventive action plan (CAPA). If Congress were a biopharma company, the FDA would have hit it repeatedly with warning letters for its inadequate responses, lack of CAPAs, failure to build...

I missed BIO this year – the first time in 40 years as a journalist that I canceled attendance at a major conference due to a death in the family. About 12 hours before I was due to board a plane to San Diego, my brother in-law, Kevin, had a massive heart attack and died at the age of 64. In life, Kevin was what health care professionals likely would describe as a “challenging” patient. Like his father, he was subject to familial hypercholesterolemia. Unlike his dad, who had a proverbial “warning shot” in his 40s and then embraced a...

Inundated with heart-wrenching stories about constituents who can’t afford the prescription drugs they need to live, U.S. lawmakers spend a lot of time lamenting a free market that isn’t working and then debating ways to “fix” it. Reality check: A free market thrives on choice. Lots of it. Thus, a free market never has and never will work for prescription drugs. Even when a few drugs compete in the same space, patients have little to no choice in which one they use. As Paul Howard, senior fellow and director of health policy at the Manhattan Institute, politely reminded Sen. Al...

BioWorld’s inaugural Summer Reading List in 2007 appeared as a simple list of 15 books – including Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, harkening to the tone of the times – designed as something a breather from post-ASCO, pre-BIO mania. Ten years later, our Summer Reading List is one of the most widely read pieces of the year, providing heartening evidence that no matter what divides biopharma, individuals across the industry – executives, scientists, investors, analysts – and the folks who report on their business successes and failures are united by enjoyment of a good read. Here are this year’s...

LONDON – It was great to be one of the thousands around the world who took to the streets on Saturday to March for Science. In London, people of all ages gathered outside the Science Museum, in high spirits, but serious of purpose, with placards ranging from thought-provoking to profound and onto outright comic. A demure woman belied the eye ‑ and the popular image ‑ with a placard declaring herself to be a “Mad Scientist;” there were several riffs on the infamous “alternative facts;” and quotes from past science greats, such as the words of the father of microbiology...

Hoping to debunk biopharma’s biggest justification for high drug prices, Public Citizen released a report Monday showing that the 20 biggest drug companies collectively generated more than $100 billion in annual profits from 2013 through 2015, nearly double what a sizable chunk of the industry spent on R&D for innovative drugs. Biopharma’s “messaging that emphasizes how much the industry spends to develop new drugs has for decades been drug corporations’ central trope” in justifying higher and higher drug prices, the watchdog group said. The cumulative profits Public Citizen reported sound breathtaking, especially when paired with the R&D spending of a...

Just a few months ago, Mylan NV got caught in a net of its own making when it raised the U.S. list price for a two-pack of its Epipen to $608, a 550 percent increase over several years. The hue and cry on Capitol Hill and from angry patients with serious allergies was that Mylan was taking advantage of its near monopoly on the epinephrine auto-injector market. Now that price is looking like a steal. Kaleo Inc. plans to relaunch its Epipen competitor, the Auvi-q auto-injector, Feb. 14 at a list price of $4,500. That’s not a typo. Defending the...