India’s 2020 Vision
If India’s biopharmaceutical players are to compete effectively on the global scale and capture 10% of the global biosimilars market by 2020, India’s private sector will have to invest a considerable amount of capital in building the necessary manufacturing capacity and skills base. At the same time, the Government of India (GOI) will also need to provide the necessary enabling environment. India’s biopharma sector consists primarily of vaccines, monoclonal antibodies, recombinant proteins and diagnostics, and the guidelines for biosimilars are already in place. All India needs to take market share is entrepreneurship. The GOI’s Department of Pharmaceuticals, in partnership with … Read more
Bioentrepreneur article online
We’ve posted a new article on the Bioentrepreneur website, Headwinds into Opportunity, by Prabhavathi Fernandes. The author is CEO, president and founder of Cempra Pharmaceuticals, and she previously helmed DarPharma, Ricerca Biosciences and Small Molecule Therapeutics. She’s also worked at BMS and Abbott. For more on her background, go here. Read more
Can a Hollywood horror movie influence drug development?
Warner Brothers has begun a publicity campaign for a new calamity film, called Contagion, scheduled to be released in the U.S. on Sept. 9. Directed by Steven Soderbergh, and made with cooperation from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, the film is about a deadly flu pandemic in which millions die. With an all-star cast that includes Matt Damon, Kate Winslet, Gwyneth Paltrow and Elliot Gould, movie industry analysts are expecting Contagion to draw big crowds and earn Warner Bothers a profit on the $60 million it invested in the film. But is it possible that this scary movie … Read more
Non-dilutive financing to power your leverage startup – part 1
In this post, we will discuss the use of non-dilutive financing to incubate early-stage technologies with commercial potential prior to company formation. This strategy is designed to advance technologies originating from, or based in, an academic environment. In a later post, we will explain how the non-dilutive financing strategy can evolve when the startup company is founded. Non-dilutive finance and the Leverage Startup Non-dilutive financing is a central tenet of the Leverage Startup Model. This model is a capital-efficient vehicle to advance research-intensive technology, through its earliest and riskiest stage, toward commercialization. The Leverage Startup is designed to leverage established … Read more
The Patent System in Brazil
During the ’60s, biology was not patentable. Genetic engineering started during the ’70s, but it was called recombinant DNA technology back then. Investments made in this area demanded a solution for intellectual property (IP) rights being applied to biology. Read more
Measuring Global Biotech: The Worldview
In the latest edition of the Scientific American Worldview we continue to ask the vital question of global biotechnology development: Who is doing what, and how well are they doing it? In developing the scorecard that is a central feature of Worldview I continue to seek to identify the global leaders in biotechnology and to provide a framework that can measure the progress and potential of countries – especially ones that are not currently regarded as world leaders. Read more
The Entrepreneur’s Bookshelf
Joyce’s Ulysses. Huxley’s Brave New World. Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury. Some of the most important books ever published in the English language. Or so I’ve heard. I’ve never read them. Of course, I want to read them. I suspect most of us have a reading list we apparently only manage to add to. Well, here a few more candidates. I took note of the titles and authors of every book that came up during presentations or discussions over two years in the Kauffman Fellows Program, which I’m proud to say I recently completed. Somewhere between a mini-MBA course, … Read more
Strategic Issues Facing Biotech Start-ups
My last post talked about broad classes of technological innovation – novel research methods and tools, novel mechanisms of action or targets, novel compound types and novel treatment modalities – and the common business models associated with them. The type of technology a company has influences the choice of business model, since the technology bears on the need for specialised assets, such as manufacturing and distribution that may or may not be readily available, and on the ease of transferring knowledge about the technology to collaborators, licensees or acquirers. Some technologies are readily written down in standard operating procedures or lab reports, whilst others may be more art than science and their implementation may require extensive personal expertise. However, technology type is not the only factor driving a firm’s choices. Read more
Five Day Filter
Here’s what you may have missed this week around the world in biotech: … Read more
Malaysian BIONEXUS incentives
As we started our work in Japan in 2000 on nano-scaffolds for corneal limbal stem cells (jointly with a group of polymer scientists headed by Yuichi Mori), the very first strategic move was to start collaborating in India, for two reasons. One was we needed a solution for treatable corneal epithelial damage-related blindness, and the other was the availability of qualified and skilled corneal surgeons. The next move was to have a technology transfer tie with Malaysia, simply because the local investors there were willing to invest their hard-earned money in a biotech venture focused on a personalized immune-cell-based cancer … Read more