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Scientists have developed a technique that could significantly reduce the time of discovering potential new antibody-based drugs to treat disease...New research...has resulted in a technique that allows fragments of antibodies to be screened for susceptibility to aggregation caused by structure disruption much earlier in the drug discovery process...a significant problem has been the failure rate of candidates upon manufacturing at industrial scale. This often only emerges at a very late stage in the development process -- these drugs are failing at the last hurdle...READ MORE

How the target proteins are screened

Directed evolution

Personalized medicine is the future of medical progress...For instance, an immunotherapy treatment called chimeric antigen receptor T-cell therapy is accessible now, and the Trump administration has the opportunity to make it widely available to Medicare beneficiaries...over 70 Members of Congress—Democrats, Republicans, liberals, and conservatives—sent a letter to Seema Verma, administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, commending the administration for “ensuring Medicare patients nationwide have access” to this life-saving treatment. The Congressional letter goes on to ask the administration to “ensure that hospitals are appropriately reimbursed so they may continue to provide” CAR-T therapy to America’s seniors...without appropriate reimbursement policy, a Medicare patient could be denied access to a treatment that would save his or her life. Without proper reimbursement by Medicare, providers simply will not be able to offer it as an option, especially in rural areas as patients must stay near a treatment center for four weeks to be monitored...READ MORE

At a time when people expect negative news in the generics industry — whether it is unabating competition, price deflation, product quality and recall issues, or product supply shortages — many generics firms are managing to thrive...Amidst this disruption, many players in the generics sector are counterpunching with innovative strategies, accelerating their efforts to pursue a diversified business model and focusing on significantly increasing their pipeline of products to include new therapeutic areas and new dosage forms. They also are developing and commercializing complex medicines and delivery systems that position their business for continued long-term growth...READ MORE

Traditional drug store chains are feeling the pressure from new digital players such as Amazon and e-pharmacy startups like Capsule and NowRx...As competition from digital rivals continues to grow, CVS and Walgreens are embracing retail healthcare and expanding their healthcare offerings by adding value-based care and outpatient services…READ MORE

Here are three things the drug chains are doing to compete with digital rivals:

• In-store health services
• Prescription drug delivery
• Possible privatization

The continued prosperity of a biopharma company is dependent on its ability to keep churning out breakthrough new drugs and turning them into commercial successes backed by a growing body of clinical evidence. Which shops are doing best on those terms?...IDEA Pharma has ranked AstraZeneca at the top of the pharma invention scale—awarding it "best pipeline" honors—and crowned Roche king in the land of innovation...READ MORE

Over the past few decades, very few new antibiotics have been developed, and most of those newly approved antibiotics are slightly different variants of existing drugs. Current methods for screening new antibiotics are often prohibitively costly, require a significant time investment, and are usually limited to a narrow spectrum of chemical diversity…In this case, the researchers designed their model to look for chemical features that make molecules effective at killing E. coli… This molecule…halicin…The researchers…found that it was able to kill many that are resistant to treatment, including Clostridium difficile, Acinetobacter baumannii, and Mycobacterium tuberculosis…“This groundbreaking work signifies a paradigm shift in antibiotic discovery and indeed in drug discovery more generally,”…READ MORE

A project that began in 2016 through a partnership with Renown Health and the Desert Research Institute, Healthy Nevada has gained national attention for its approach to population health. The study involves harvesting DNA from a significant population, providing individuals with information on their health risks as well data to study population health issues and concerns. According to Dr. Anthony Slonim, president and CEO of Renown Health...“We hope to improve the health of the community,” explained Slonim. “We hope to provide individuals with improved understanding of their health and their healthcare risks so they can change their behavior. And, we hope that we can make our community, our state and, potentially, our nation healthier as a result of this data.”...READ MORE

News about COVID-19 runs rampant on the internet and changes by the hour, or even by the minute. It’s difficult to stay on top of what’s happening, much less what’s important, in the life sciences industry without scrubbing the entire internet. That's what W2O Group and the California Life Sciences Association (CLSA) are looking to change with a new data-driven platform...Their jointly launched dashboard, called COR, uses W2O’s machine and artificial intelligence data engine to scrape its life science industry data set for news and posts mentioning COVID-19. It then serves up the top-ranked information across different sectors—life sciences, healthcare providers, media, California, and the scientific community—to reveal what’s trending in each one from that segment’s leading voices and sources in almost real time...READ MORE

Health care is poised for a potential giant leap forward thanks to the 3D printing of medications. To advance the technology and science of 3D pharmaceutical printing, Purdue University’s College of Pharmacy and Aprecia Pharmaceuticals are launching a comprehensive collaboration on future 3DP pharmaceutical equipment and medications…READ MORE

The U.S. will get its first entirely 5G-enabled hospital this week as the Department of Veterans Affairs brings the technology up online at its Palo Alto hospital...The VA's Palo Alto Health Care System, which is an affiliate of Stanford University School of Medicine, will be coming online as also the first 5G-enabled health facility in the world VA Secretary Robert Wilkie said…"What 5G will deliver is richer, more detailed, three-dimensional images of the patient's anatomy with resolution so clear and consistent that it will give us reliable use of important telesurgery services to veterans across the nation," Wilkie said. "That means reliable capacity to allow the VA's best physicians to consult during surgery even when they are not in the same room or halfway across the country."...READ MORE