Archive for the ‘Research’ Category

Frannie
Marmorstein

“Success is stumbling from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm.” – Winston Churchill

Thursday, December 6th, 2012

Yesterday I was browsing Popular Science and found an interesting article, Science Confirms the Obvious: Rejection Can Make You More Creative. The article discussed new research being conducted by a team from Cornell and Johns Hopkins that found people who handle rejection in a proper manner, can experience heightened creativity and even commercial success through an ability to avoid mainstream thought and pursue their own creative solutions to problems.

In summary, rejection or failure forces people to be creative and think outside of their “box.” While this sounds pretty obvious, I started thinking about this in terms of scientific research and advancement and how, as a community, we need to be embracing this concept. The scientific community continually wants to publish and promote positive study results, but does this really benefit the advancement of science? What if some of our biggest rejections could lead us to a greater success? (more…)

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John
Seng

Pre-Competitive = Pro-Patient?

Thursday, June 21st, 2012

I attended a BIO 2012 “super session” this afternoon moderated by my friend Margaret Anderson, executive director of Washington, DC-based Faster Cures, a leading advocacy group to “improve the medical research enterprise.”

Margaret led a panel of the top people from NIH, FDA, Harvard Medical School, Lilly Research Laboratories and Sanofi, who each presented a perspective on “pre-competitive collaboration.” In other words, let’s work together under a flag of truce. (That is, until somebody fires the first shot.)

“Pre-competitive collaboration” means that companies who guard their secrets today should instead pull back the veil a little to work in synergy with competitors who would otherwise want to eat their lunch today and dinner tomorrow.

Unsurprisingly, each expert shed a few fresh insights, but generally much we’ve all heard before with regard to how expensive, unwieldy and slow typical clinical trials still are.

Rather than recite or summarize everything shared, suffice to say I devoted about 90 minutes to a session in which everyone on stage agreed that things are bad, that more and much earlier collaboration and sharing of data needs to be done, and how progress against disease state after disease state suffers because we’re not talking with one another soon enough in the process. From obesity to lack of optimal pain management, from cancer to Alzheimer’s disease, the panelists fretted about the challenges and generally agreed that the best hope is earlier, smarter and perhaps more courageous (my word) collaboration.

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Jett
Choquette

A Year for Scientific Innovation: How Biotechnology Fits into America’s Future

Friday, February 3rd, 2012

Photo credit: RACHEL DEVOR / THE EAGLE

Last week I had the opportunity to listen to two U.S. presidents discuss the future of America and the world – President Barack Obama in the 2012 State of the Union (via live-stream) and former President Bill Clinton at American University where he spoke about his latest work with the William J. Clinton Foundation (as a member of the audience).

While the purpose and overall messaging of both speeches were drastically different, one theme tied them together: America’s future depends on scientific innovation and, more importantly, investment in science. If the calls for action in both of these speeches materialize, this may be the year for biotechnology.

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Kelly
Barrett

BDI’s Social Communications & Healthcare 2011: Empowering employees to ‘play’ with social media

Tuesday, July 19th, 2011

Last Wednesday, I had the pleasure of attending the Business Development Institute’s Social Communications & Healthcare conference in New York City. It was the third year that BDI has put on the conference but one of the first times the event has included such robust case studies from industry leaders.

It is unfortunate that in pharma, we really don’t have many social media case studies to look at, yet. And this isn’t just because social media is new, because really, it’s not that new anymore (and what’s new today is old tomorrow). The problem lies more in the fact that so many companies and agencies are doing innovative stuff that they aren’t yet allowed to disclose. Here at Spectrum, a number of our progressive social media-related initiatives are highly sensitive and stay confidential. However, in the meantime, it’s inspiring to see all the ways people are finding to best socially communicate.

BDI Wrap Up from Zemoga on Vimeo.

(Pixels & Pills covered the event and they provide a ton of great video interviews that you should check out. And New Millenium Research & Consulting has photos up on their Facebook.)

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Anthony
LaFauce

Being Part of the Story on the Screen: 3rd Annual Genetic Alliance Gene Screen

Friday, June 24th, 2011

Last night Spectrum had the privilege of hosting a Q&A session for the Genetic Alliance’s Gene Screen and I was honored to attend The Gene Screen, an annual review of films and shorts focused on health and genetics.  The session wasn’t long, around an hour and a half, but it was filled with the type of emotion normally reserved for big budget ‘tear jerkers.’

The list of films varied from personal stories like “Me and Antoine B.” and “Aiden’s Journey: Awareness and Hope” to more traditional Public Service Announcements like “No More Hand-Me-Downs: Research Designed for Children.” But the one thing they all had in common was their strength.

Strength isn’t something that often comes to mind when you think about the process of making a movie, but I was moved by the sheer force of will it took to make some of these films. Film production alone is a difficult, draining process that forces individuals to work long hours, editing and poring over meticulous tasks. Add to that the emotional burden of working on material as powerful and heartbreaking as the stories of these genetic disorders, and its truly remarkable the films were completed.

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Ricki
McCarroll

FDA beats out European Counterpart in Oncology Drug Approval

Thursday, June 16th, 2011

The FDA is proving to be a top contender in the international space in its efforts to fight the battle on the Big C, yes we’re talking cancer.

Source: Friends of Cancer Research Study

A new study released online today by Friends of Cancer Research in Health Affairs reports that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has a faster approval rate for oncology drugs than their European counterpart agency, the European Medicines Agency (EMA).

The study was held over a seven year period beginning 2003 through 2010. Authors Samantha A. Roberts, Jeff D. Allen, and Ellen V. Sigal investigated 35 drugs going through approval process in both markets and compiled their results in an eight-page report complete with graphics and pull quotes.

FDA v. EMA Stats

  • 35 drugs were investigated
  • FDA approved 32 oncology drugs while the EMA approved only 26
  • In addition, FDA’s approval for said drugs was over 31 percent more time efficient that the EMA

Statistically speaking, the approval ratio is less than one.

Finding the data

Authors of the study utilized public data bases on the FDA and EMA websites to conduct their research. Drugs used in the study are direct oncology treatments, drugs related to “supportive care” such as pain relievers and anti-nausea medications were omitted in their findings.

Check it Out

The Friends of Cancer Research study is currently available online and will be available in the July issue of Health Affairs.

What’s the spark under the FDA?

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