Articles By Rob Wright

  1. Drug Development – You Get What You Incentivize For 5/30/2014

    Allowing the application of a “one-size- fits-all” intellectual property policy that affords the same protection for Frisbees as lifesaving and sustaining medicines would be, quite frankly, moronic and short-sighted. It would also be a disincentive for companies to develop R&D-intensive drugs because the longer it takes to develop, the shorter patent life you have. The converse is also true — less costly drugs brought to market more quickly get longer patents.

  2. Astrazeneca's Biologics Veteran: Applying A Risk-Based Approach To Plan For Capacity 4/29/2014

    Imagine you are seated at a table preparing to discuss the manufacturing of biologics. The person across from you possesses nearly 40 years’ worth of wisdom on the topic. You, on the other hand, have zero experience in this field. Kind of like a rookie stepping into the batter’s box against Nolan Ryan and understanding that if a 95 mph baseball is coming at his head he has less than .4 seconds to get out of the way.

  3. It's Not The Tool, It's The Technique 4/29/2014

    My son plays on his college’s golf team. In the fall he was struggling with his putting. What is the obvious solution needed to fix the problem? Why, to buy a new putter of course. It could not possibly be anything to do with the technique. It must be the tool.

  4. Merck Serono's CEO Belén Garijo – Enabling Risk And Refusing To Play It Safe 4/1/2014

    Sitting on the secondlevel balcony of the grand ballroom in the historic New York Waldorf-Astoria, my vantage point provides a bird’s-eye view of the floor below. Today, the room serves as a central meeting place for attendees of the sixteenth BIO CEO and Investor Conference. I wonder aloud to my table guest, Belén Garijo, M.D., as to the uniqueness of being interviewed in this venue.

  5. Reports Of U.S. Biomedical R&D Demise – A Great Exaggeration 2/2/2014

    Prior to heading out to the 32nd Annual J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference in San Francisco last month, I stumbled across several article headlines indicating the United States’ domination of global biomedical R&D was fading. What metric was used to determine this? R&D spend. According to “new” research from the University of Michigan Health System, the U.S. share of the global biomedical R&D business declined from 51 percent to a mere 45 percent from 2007 to 2012. And while Europe remained unchanged at 29 percent, Asia rose from 18 to 24 percent.

  6. Lilly's Approach To The Clinical Trial Paradox 2/2/2014

    When I sat down with Eli Lilly (NYSE: LLY) and Company’s chief medical officer and coleader of the company’s Development Center of Excellence, Timothy Garnett, it was shortly after the drugmaker’s annual investment community meeting where bankers grilled the leadership team with questions.

  7. Mission TransCelerate: Transforming The Drug Development Terrain 1/8/2014

    During the ill-fated 1970 Apollo 13 mission to the moon, it was astronaut Jack Swigert who alerted ground control that something had gone terribly wrong when he uttered the phrase, “Houston, we’ve had a problem here.” Those same words seem very fitting to the current state of affairs around the skyrocketing costs of drug discovery. Recent estimates place the expense of successfully bringing just one drug to market at between $350 million and $1.2 billion. However, in the last decade, companies having brought 4 to 13 drugs to market have watched the price tag reach stratospheric heights — orbiting $5 billion+. “I think the pain point has reached a threshold that’s no longer bearable,” states Dalvir Gill, Ph.D., CEO of TransCelerate BioPharma.

  8. Prevent Drug Development Costs With The KISS Principle 1/7/2014

    Ever heard of the KISS (keep it simple, stupid) principle? The general idea behind it is that systems perform best when the design is simple, not complex. My favorite example demonstrating the application of KISS, as well as the impact of failing to do so, is captured in a scene in the 1995 movie Apollo 13. An incident necessitates three astronauts use the lunar module (LM), a ship built just for landing on the moon, as a lifeboat to survive.

  9. Shire's $120 Million Single-Use Gamble 12/12/2013

    Project Atlas is a 200,000 square foot biologics manufacturing facility. This facility is unique because its entire upstream line utilizes single-use systems, but what’s more interesting is the plant $210 million dollar price tag is $127.6 million shy of the company’s annual profit.

  10. Eli Lilly Research Lab Tour Reveals More Than Meets The Eye 11/1/2013

    Lilly Research laboratories (LRL) opened doors to a select group of media for a rare behind-the-scenes tour of three new innovation labs.