Honors and Awards
Kendle, Quintiles Named to Training Top 125 Kendle and Quintiles have been named to Training magazine’s Training Top 125, an annual list of the 125 companies that are unsurpassed in harnessing human capital. The Training Top 125 rankings are based on a wide array of benchmarking statistics, including training budgets, number of training hours per employee program, goals, evaluation, measurement, amount of annual training per employee, and more. Training at Kendle is delivered via Kendle College, an international network of learning resources available to all associates. Quintiles rises to No. 47 on the list after coming in at No. 80 in 2009, the company’s first time in the rankings. Quanticate Receives Innovation Award Quanticate, a global biometrics CRO, has received the 2010 Kinetic Process Innovation Award for excellence in clinical data management and clinical trial services. Now in its 13th year, the award program recognizes excellence in information technology. The company won the award for delivering a complex electronic European submission for medical writing. The firm was contracted to produce reports and write CSRs for two placebo-controlled trials, along with two further CSRs for the customer’s open-label extension studies. All four studies reported from disparate databases, which required detailed analysis plans to avoid redundancies. Quanticate was able to deliver the project on time and on budget. Regulatory Affairs Workload at Drug Development Firms Has Increased A growing volume of global drug development and commercialization activity during the past decade has increased the workload for regulatory affairs professionals at pharmaceutical and biotech companies, according to a study recently completed by the Tufts Center for the Study of Drug Development. The study, the first systematic assessment of global regulatory affairs performance, found that the regulatory affairs function within drug development companies has grown steadily, with most departments tending to hire from within. This comes at a time when a growing number of those companies are outsourcing more of their clinical trial work to external service providers. Other findings: n Regulatory affairs functions support, on average, 100 major projects per year, two-thirds of which are in clinical research phases. n On average, 39% of regulatory staff have more than 10 years of experience. This compares with 9% for clinical staff. n Annual average internal staff turnover for regulatory affairs groups was 6.5%, compared with 21% for clinical groups. n Companies report that only 5% of staff are contract employees, who are engaged in connection with dossier compilation. The Medicine Cabinet Patients Take More Power Over Prescription Decisions According to a new Pharma Insight study released today by Wolters Kluwer Pharma Solutions, commercial health plan patients abandoned new prescriptions at the pharmacy at a rate of 6.3% in 2009, which is up 24% over 2008. In addition, the abandonment rate for new prescriptions of brand-name drugs alone was 8.6% in 2009, up 23% from 2008, and 68% since 2006. The study also found that 66%, or two out of three prescriptions filled last year, were generic compared with 60% in 2008 and 50% in 2005. These statistics point to a rising number of lower-priced market alternatives, and increasing access to those thanks to widespread health plan coverage and programs sponsored by mass retailers. Consumer selection of generics has become even more pronounced in a down economy. According to the data, there were 2.6 billion prescriptions filled for generic drugs in 2009 and 1.3 billion for brand-name medications. Capital Spending Big Pharma Gaining Strength, Expecting a Full Recovery Capital spending in 2010 for the North American pharmaceutical and biotech industry will experience a healthy amount of growth from 2009 levels, according to a report from Industrial Info Resources. Industrial Info is tracking 506 projects in North America with a total investment value (TIV) of $15.3 billion that are scheduled to kick off in 2010. By contrast, last year saw 453 projects with a TIV of $13.4 billion kick off. This year’s capital budgets for pharmaceutical and biotech companies won’t approach the levels seen a few years ago. But the good news is that when pharmaceutical and biotech companies announce capital projects, they almost always take place, say executives from Industrial Info. Mergers thinned the ranks of pharma and biotech companies last year, causing the closure of facilities in North America as part of the consolidation and rationalization process. But the prospect of expanding markets in the United States and overseas and the continuing need to discover and patent new medication will lead to expanded capital and maintenance project opportunities during the second half of 2010 and into 2011. PharmaVOICE 100 Who Has Inspired You? The PharmaVOICE 100 will be determined by the collective participation of you, our readers. This is your opportunity to recognize the people who inspire you; who are having the greatest influence on corporate leadership, research and development, technology, creativity, marketing, strategy, and more; and who are impacting the life-sciences industry through their actions. These individuals should view industry trends as challenges not burdens, as opportunities not obstacles. They should embody panache and conviction. They should be leaders who plan for the future rather than respond to change. They should be innovative, creators of outside-the-box and breakthrough strategies, products, and services. They should be pioneering new paths and lifting their companies to new heights. The original is always the best — don’t miss your opportunity to weigh in on the most anticipated issue of the year! The deadline for submissions is May 1, 2010. Please visit pharmavoice.com/100 for more information. Life Sciences Funding Venture Capital Funding Overcomes Record Lows Companies in the life-sciences sector captured the largest share of overall venture capital during 2009, reflecting the relative strength of the sector during the economic downturn, according to PricewaterhouseCoopers. Under Recovery, a new PwC report that includes data from the PwC/NVCA MoneyTree Report, based on data from Thomson Reuters, finds that life-sciences funding for 2009 totaled $6 billion in 715 deals, accounting for 34% of all VC dollars invested, compared with 28% in 2008. For all sectors, venture capitalists invested $17.7 billion in 2,795 deals in 2009, marking the lowest level of dollar investment since 1997. Compared with 2008, dollar investments into life sciences plunged 22% in 2009, while the number of deals dropped 19% during the same time period, marking its lowest point in the past six years. Despite the decline, life-sciences investment has outpaced overall venture capital funding since the third quarter of 2008. The findings: n In the last quarter of 2009, biotechnology investments totaled $1 billion in 108 deals with another $719 million going into 87 medical device and equipment deals. Biotechnology funding declined by 7% year over year, primarily due to a drop in deal activity. But funding for medical devices increased by 14% compared with the same quarter in 2008. This increase reflected gains in both deal activity and deal size. n Early-stage funding for the life-sciences sector exceeded $1 billion in the fourth quarter of 2009 for the first time. Increases in both deal activity and deal size resulted in this rise in early-stage investment. Late-stage funding declined to $717 million in the fourth quarter of 2009, compared with $1 billion in the same quarter in 2008. Late-stage deal activity and deal size both declined in this period. n In the fourth quarter of 2009, with $714 million in funding, the biotech human subsegment alone received almost as much funding as the whole medical device industry. Out of 108 biotechnology deals for the fourth quarter of 2009, 64 of those belonged to biotech human. Looking at 2009 as a whole, 244 of the 406 biotechnology deals belonged to the biotech human subsegment. Investment in the biotech equipment subsegment demonstrated strong growth for the year, increasing by 67% to $207 million. n In the medical-device industry, the medical therapeutics subsegment historically attracts the most funding every quarter. But it began to show a decline after the second quarter in 2009, dropping from $455 million in that quarter to $439 million in the fourth quarter. Within the medical therapeutics subsegment, the surgical lasers subsegment jumped by 58% to $78 million. Surgical instrumentation and equipment also gained a small percentage, capturing $865 million for the year. Tuning in… Podcasts Social Networking in Patient Recruitment for Clinical Trials Featured Thought Leader: Scott Connor, Acurian Inc. Industry-Sponsored Studies and Journal Publication Planning Featured Thought Leaders: Bernadette Mansi, GlaxoSmithKline, and Dr. Trish Groves, British Medical Journal Brand Stewardship and Creative Integrity Featured Thought Leaders: Bruce Rooke, GSW Worldwide, and Tammy Fischer, GSW Worldwide, NY office Modernizing Incentive Compensation Plans Featured Thought Leader: Stephen M. Fox, IMS Management Consulting White Papers and Presentations Leveraging On-Line Social Networks for Clinical Trial Recruitment Sponsored by: Acurian Inc. Build vs. Buy: SaaS Sponsored by: Biltmore Technologies Inc. Discovering the Value of KOL Identification & Mapping Sponsored by: Snowfish LLC SaaS in Wolf Clothing Sponsored by: Veeva Systems
