ARTICLE BY LOUIS

• Innovators In The Pharmaceutical Packaging Industry

  12/14/2015

  As biologics and global injectable-drug markets grow, BioPharma needs advancements ensuring the highest quality in the integration of new delivery systems and packaging technologies that can be administered outside of clinical settings. Service providers are responding.

• A Global Forum For Outsourcing (With Simple Objectives)

  9/24/2014

  Perhaps the best advice I’ve heard regarding industry conferences is twofold: first, make sure you attend, and second, keep your objectives for attending simple.

• Serial Entrepreneur Points To Initial Funding Sources For Biotechs

  9/24/2014

  Kevin Judice lists himself on LinkedIn as “Entrepreneur.” Perhaps he has to; there just isn’t enough space to include the three companies he recently started and at which he concurrently is employed as CEO or CSO.

• Is Long-Term Unemployment An Issue For Pharma?

  4/24/2014

  As we slipped into the booth at the local diner, it occurred to me that the last time I had spoken to Glen was at this same venue. “Yeah, that was two years ago,” he said with a tinge of nostalgia. Two years ago? Time had flown by for me but I know it was not the case for him. Glen still had not found a new full-time position.

  A Ph.D. scientist (organic chemistry) with solid people skills and senior management experience, I was surprised when he got down-sized. I was just as sure he would end up in a good place in the long-run. Unfortunately, the long-run never came. After pursuing “more than 100 legitimate job leads and conversations throughout the pharmaceutical industry,” Glen is still looking for a new job. And just like that, I found myself sitting face-to-face with the long-term unemployment epidemic that is afflicting many individuals in the U.S., as well as scientists and pharmaceutical employees from around the world.

• The Language Of Our Industry

  4/21/2014

  True character and the quality of our thoughts are revealed in the way we talk about ourselves and the events in which we participate. We may purposely affect certain patterns of language, but the real thing is sooner or later uncovered.

   

  Or something like that. We also know we have to walk the talk, as the more succinct saying puts it. Considering specifically the language of the contract drug discovery, development and manufacturing industry, in a recent outsourcing survey conducted by contractpharma.com, 75% of respondents said that they would use the word “partnership” to describe their relationship with their contract service providers. That has to be good news for both pharma sponsors and the CROs/CMOs around the world, and points to an improvement in level of service delivered by the latter.

• The Survey Says Affordability … And More

  2/21/2014

  Life Science is an industry driven by data, with human lives depending on it at any moment of the day. For outsourcing providers hoping to keep on top of sponsor perceptions of CMOs, the data of record is the industry-leading surveyor firm, Nice Insight. Recently they have been helping the industry parse the results of their 2013-2014 Pharmaceutical and Biotechnology Survey.

  The data from this survey is sliced and diced by pharma around the world to help them do some benchmarking (pun intended) of CRO and CMO partners. The Survey serves as a vital aid in helping select the right outsourcing providers, both from a strategic and tactical perspective for individual research programs as well as manufacturing projects. It can also assist with internal versus industry comparisons. For example, it can give insight into questions such as “Why was the experience that I had with a certain CRO different from that of another pharma firm?” And because we work in an industry where  by necessity information is kept confidential, the pharmaceutical sponsors and service providers are often protective of conveying too much information about their relationships (provided they are providing any information at all). The beauty of the survey is that it provides industry-wide data that is available for all of us to peruse and analyze.