Buying Innovation: A Look at Pharma Mergers and Acquisitions

We’ve looked at what happens to a drug when a patent expires, but what happens to the patent owner? As patents have expired and many blockbuster drugs become generic, pharmaceutical companies have looked to new drugs and innovations to replace the lost income. Getting a drug through regulatory hurdles, such as clinical trials and safety testing, is difficult and millions of dollars can be lost from an unexpected failure. As many patents have expired and only a few drugs have replaced them in the past decade, pharmaceutical companies have looked to mergers and acquisitions for new products and drugs in an effort to buy innovation.

Just in the past couple weeks there have been a bevy of attempted and completed acquisitions:

• Amylin exploring a sale to AstraZeneca
• AstraZeneca purchase Ardea Biosciences for 1.26 Billion
• Illumina rejects attempted $6.5 billion buyout by Roche
• Nabi Biopharmaceuticals merges with Biota Holdings Limited

Merger and Acquisition (M&A) drastically changes the layout of the industry but it is not always the answer. Our new infographic outlines the past acquisitions in the last decade, the biggest deals, and how much market value was lost after M&A; I’ll sneak out a spoiler and say that over $1 trillion dollars in market value was lost in the last decade. I can see why there is concern over the stability of some of the most household pharma company names.

What’s the answer then? Many companies have also resorted to restructurings and refocusing (such as Pfizer selling its infant-nutrition division to Nestle).  At the depot, we believe a better solution is to empower scientists with effective and efficient ways of doing research, which can come in the form of open science or new research tools. Some pharmaceutical companies have taken a step in the right direction. In La Jolla, Merck has invested $90 million in a new research institute and Janssen has created an incubator for start-up drug and devices companies.  New web-based research tools, such as CDD’s database software, IDBS’s E-workbooks, or our own Research Exchange platform, allow scientists to take advantage of the best tools that have been developed for the consumer web.  It is only by empowering all scientists can we achieve the ultimate goal of promoting innovation while cutting costs.  Ultimately, the scientists are the ones innovating and they need the tools to make it happen. 

 

[Infographic] Drug Discovery Goes Global: Location of CROs Around the World

As pharmaceutical and biotech research becomes more externalized, it is becoming increasingly important to know who is doing your research. Some researchers are fine having their services done halfway around the world, others prefer a more local approach. After the popularity of our first map that laid out all the research providers in the San Diego area, we developed a new infographic outlining the locations of CROs worldwide. Using our vast database of CRO information, we parsed out the number of CROs by continent and then drilled down into the CRO breakdown in the USA. There are expected results, such as the large number of CROs in the east coast of the US, but there are surprising results too, as can be seen from the growing emerging markets. We look forward to comparing the data now to data years from now; will it stay the same?

 

[Infographic] Access Granted: What Happens When the Patent Expires?

The price of pharmaceutical drugs has been an issue of national debate for decades. As many blockbuster drug patents end in the few years (or have already ended!), manufacturing of generic versions of drugs should help to alleviate the rising cost of healthcare. Pharmaceutical companies have been trying to delay the end of valuable patents, but they have been forced into looking into other solutions to develop new drugs more effectively and therefore file new patents more reliably.

Our new infographic looks at how generics compare to brand name drugs losing patent in 2012, as well as how generics have affected the health care market the past few years. Clearly a new solution for drug discovery will be key to the survival of pharmaceuticals in the future, a solution that we hope Research Exchanges can provide.

Assay Depot is offering Webinars!

As use of the Assay Depot Public Research Exchange continues to grow at a rapid pace, we thought it would be a helpful to offer a few 30-minute webinars in order to officially introduce our users to the system and how it works. The concept of the sessions is to show that a user can easily find one or more research vendors that offer a specific service, send out a request for more information or upload a project protocol for that service, and then they are able to compare the prices/turn around times, and information received from each vendor - and all of this within the Assay Depot User Dashboard!

We currently have four webinars schedule, one every Tuesday through the month of March. To register to attend a session, click the link for your date of interest below.

• Tuesday, Mar 6th 12:30pm EST (9:30am PST)
• Tuesday, Mar 13th 12:30pm EST (9:30am PST)
• Tuesday, Mar 20th 12:30pm EST (9:30am PST)
• Tuesday, Mar 27th 12:30pm EST (9:30am PST)

 

[Infographic] Banned As We Know It: A Timeline of Drugs That Are No More

Mankind has historically tried a range of interesting treatments and medicine, whether it was leeches on the neck or a nice bottle of mercury. Nowadays, we have regulatory agencies, such as the FDA, to make sure that our medicine is effective at helping us and not killing us. Even with the FDA and rigorous testing, some unexpected complications can slip by; for example, a drug that reduced complications during pregnancy was on the market for 31 years, but eventually pulled when it was found to cause tumors. Our newest infographic looks at the history of drugs that passed FDA testing and later were banned or recalled. 

[Infographic] Cool Science: Discovering the International Genetically Engineered Machine Competition

Science is reliant on new ideas to drive society forward and who better to look for that innovation than students? The International Genetically Engineered Machine Competition (IGEM) provides the perfect backdrop to tap not only into the creative juices of new scientists, but the competitive drive of youths worldwide. Our infographic looks into the history of the IGEM competition (http://2012.igem.org/Main_Page) and the neat inventions that have resulted from it. Take a look!

Assay Depot is launching it's own competition for Bay Area scientists of all ages to submit their research plans. We will provide two prizes of $5000 and one under-18 prize of $1000 (and BioCurious will provide one-year membership to it's laboratory hackerspace!); we want to provide as many opportunities for budding scientists.

 

[Infographic] Republicans vs Democrats: Which Party Really Rallies for Science

The presidential election season is upon us and issues from all spectrums are coming up. The issue closest to our heart is science. Our newest infographic compares opinions and government support for science initiatives and research. Find out where your party stands when it comes to science and where science funding is heading in the future.

[Infographic] Dialing in on Americans' Thoughts on Stem Cell Research

Stem Cells have been a topic of controversy for years. They provide a unique opportunity to address humanity's worst diseases yet derive mostly from human embryos. As with any controversy, there are many facts, opinions, and misinformation thrown around in the public conscience. This infographic outlines America's opinions on the Stem Cell issue and how public perception relates to scientific progression.

An Inside Look at Spam Requests

Vendors using the Assay Depot network have likely noticed an increase in Spam requests over the past month. Our apologies for any wasted time reading these. Please simply archive them or click on the Mark as Spam button to remove them from your dashboard. 

Assay Depot has Spam filters in place that remove most inappropriate requests, so why the recent increase? Simply put, Spammers continue to get more sophisticated. The most recent Spam requests included paragraphs of real text that appear to be copied from Wikipedia.

What is Spamdexing?

Although much Spam is sent in an attempt to promote the sale of illegitimate products or get access to confidential information, the Spam we are encountering is likely Spamdexing. This type of spam is usually not malicious to the end user, as the main objective is to deliberately increase a website’s rankings in Internet search engines. Spammers like these often work for marketing firms that promise higher page ranks to their customers on Google or Bing. 

Note – The Spammers don't apparently know that the Spamdexing approach won’t work with the Assay Depot system since customer requests are privately secured and are not indexed publicly. 

What are we doing about it?  

We are upgrading our Spam filters over the next month. This will involve using actual requests to “train” the Spam filter to distinguish between real and fake requests.   

We appreciate your patience and understanding! Please post a reply or contact us at info@assaydepot.com if you have any questions or need assistance.

 

[Infographic] Malaria, the Possible Eradication of the World's Greatest Killer

Malaria is still one of the world's greatest killers, with hundreds of millions of infected people and more than 780,000 deaths in 2009 alone.  But there is hope for a new vaccine in 2015 that, together with widespread use of insecticide treated nets (ITNs) and other scientific breakthroughs, may finally put an end to this deadly disease. Our new infographic outlines the prevalence of malaria worldwide and the scientific breakthroughs that are helping to eradicate it.

 

Do you work with infectious diseases? Check out our Malaria section or our infectious disease model services.