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Nicole Grassano, PTNN, Pharmacy Week in Review, this weekly video program provides our readers with an in-depth review of the latest news, product approvals, FDA rulings and more.

Laura Joszt, Managing Editor at The American Journal of Managed Care. Welcome to This Week in Managed Care from the Managed Markets News Network

Nicole Grassano, PTNN, Pharmacy Week in Review, this weekly video program provides our readers with an in-depth review of the latest news, product approvals, FDA rulings and more.

Biopharmaceuticals, a class of drugs comprising proteins such as antibodies and hormones, represent a fast-growing sector of the pharmaceutical industry. They’re increasingly important for “precision medicine” — drugs tailored toward the genetic or molecular profiles of particular groups of patients...Such drugs are normally manufactured at large facilities dedicated to a single product, using processes that are difficult to reconfigure. This rigidity means that manufacturers tend to focus on drugs needed by many patients, while drugs that could help smaller populations of patients may not be made...To help make more of these drugs available, MIT researchers have developed a new way to rapidly manufacture biopharmaceuticals on demand. Their system can be easily reconfigured to produce different drugs, enabling flexible switching between products as they are needed...Traditional biomanufacturing relies on unique processes for each new molecule that is produced...We’ve demonstrated a single hardware configuration that can produce different recombinant proteins in a fully automated, hands-free manner...

...researchers of a new study published in JAMA Network Open found that nearly 800 dietary supplements were found to be adulterated with unapproved drugs. Specifically, from 2007 to 2016, there were 776 dietary supplements identified to contain one or more hidden drug ingredients, implicating 146 dietary supplement companies...Most of the adulterated dietary supplements were marketed for sexual enhancement, weight loss, and muscle building. The most common hidden drug ingredient in sexual enhancement supplements is sildenafil, the active ingredient in Viagra, while the most common additive in weight loss supplements is banned weight-loss drug sibutramine, and synthetic steroid drugs for the muscle building supplements...experts are now urging the FDA to take urgent action to have these products removed from the market. Such products pose serious health risks, especially to users who are unaware that the supplements they are taking are actually adulterated with drugs...

Nicole Grassano, PTNN, Pharmacy Week in Review, this weekly video program provides our readers with an in-depth review of the latest news, product approvals, FDA rulings and more.

Three scientists shared this year’s Nobel Prize in Chemistry for tapping the power of evolutionary biology to design molecules with a range of practical uses...Those include new drugs, more efficient and less toxic reactions in the manufacture of chemicals and plant-derived fuels to replace oil, gas and coal extracted from the ground...Half of the prize and the accompanying $1 million...Stockholm, went to Frances H. Arnold, a professor of chemical engineering at the California Institute of Technology. She is only the fifth woman to win a chemistry Nobel and the first since 2009...The other half of the prize is shared by George P. Smith, an emeritus professor of biological sciences at the University of Missouri, and Gregory P. Winter, a biochemist at the M.R.C. Laboratory of Molecular Biology in England...The prize highlights the narrowing of the gap between biology and some fields of chemistry as chemists turn to nature for inspiration...

...most pharma companies have begun to use data to make marketing decisions, one healthcare agency data veteran sees a recurring problem in the way that data is typically utilized...Pharma marketers too often only use data after the fact, said Kevin Troyanos...Saatchi & Saatchi Wellness. While post-campaign ROI analysis is important to find out what worked and what didn’t for the next effort, it can also lead to confirmation bias...That’s when data is used to validate the HiPPO—Highest Paid Person’s Opinion..True data-driven companies use information dynamically to inform decisions, identify what works and what doesn’t work and to make changes on the fly...Pharma typically puts a lot of research into one tactic, one channel or one creative and are almost locked in to it. What happens then is that teams are leveraging data in a defensive way, essentially using it to say that the decision they made was the right one and this is why,” he said. “Pharma needs to begin to use data as a driver, not as a defense mechanism.”...

Laura Joszt, Managing Editor at The American Journal of Managed Care. Welcome to This Week in Managed Care from the Managed Markets News Network

Frustrated by delays in new medicines reaching their own country, a small but growing number of patients are turning to an online broker that bills itself as a legal version of the Dallas Buyers Club...While regulators warn of the risk of buying drugs online, the Amsterdam-based Social Medwork sees its network of trusted suppliers as filling a gap in the market for the latest drugs against diseases such as cancer, migraine and multiple sclerosis...Now it is looking to raise its profile and expand, by signing up former EU Commissioner Neelie Kroes to its supervisory board and securing 1.5 million euros ($1.73 million) in new funding from the Social Impact Ventures capital fund...patients who cannot get the drugs they want through local healthcare systems are using the organization to self-import medicines from abroad...