Global The World Health Assembly Special Session on a Pandemic Treaty, which will convene health ministries from around the world in Geneva next week, offers a unique opportunity to take a look back and share some important lessons learnt from fighting the COVID-19 pandemic. James Anderson, Executive Director, Global Health, at…

Global Walt Vernon is CEO of US-based healthcare facilities consulting firm, Mazzetti, and non-profit, Sextant. He is on the Board of the FGI and served on NFPA 99 ELS, NFPA 70 CMP15, and ASHRAE 189.3. He chairs the ASHRAE Infectious Aerosols Position Document Committee and represents the US in the International…

UK After a tumultuous year, AstraZeneca is creating a standalone vaccine unit and will begin to charge for its COVID-19 vaccine shot, having previously provided it at cost. PharmaBoardroom looks back at the reputational hits (some fair and some less so) that the firm has suffered over the past 12 months…

Europe In the wake of the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26), sustainability is once more a hot-button issue across all industries, including pharma. Here, Marco Rauland, vice president global market access & pricing strategic planning at Merck Group, casts his eye across Europe to assess how sustainability criteria are…

UK The latest news from UK pharma, including AstraZeneca’s decision to create a dedicated business unit for its COVID-19 vaccines, GSK’s raised profits forecast, and CDMO Almac’s move to create over 1,000 new jobs at its facilities in Northern Ireland over the next three years.   AstraZeneca to create dedicated Covid…

Europe Cyril Titeux, senior VP mid-sized markets EMEA & strategic leader at Janssen, argues that the current focus of many health systems on efficiency, streamlining, and reducing spending is leaving them ill-prepared to absorb the shock of future crises. Titeux instead posits the need for the building up of resilience and…

Global After 20 years, Novartis will no longer own one third of Roche’s shares after the two Swiss pharma giants agreed to a transaction worth USD 20.7 billion. While Roche touted the deal as the regaining of “full strategic flexibility”, Novartis argued that it was the right time to “monetize” its…

Global With advances in technology, an increasing number of stable peptide-based therapeutics are being brought to market today across a wide range of therapeutic areas. Through expert insight, we explain why the peptide field is generating so much excitement, outline some of the most significant recent breakthroughs and big-ticket investments, and…

Global After a challenging 2020, and with more hurdles in sight, Bayer has been on an investment spree with a USD 2 billion acquisition of a San Diego-based biotech and manufacturing sites in Latin America and Norway.   Bayer had a challenging year in 2020. While the German giant argued in…

Italy Speaking recently to PharmaBoardoom, Assobiotec’s Leonardo Vingiani introduced the key dynamics shaping the Italian biotech industry today and the issues it still has to overcome to become truly globally competitive.   Strong Fundamentals The association’s latest reporting shows that there are 751 active biotech firms in Italy, with a turnover…

Germany The latest news from German pharma, including Bayer’s USD 2 billion acquisition of San Diego’s Vividion Therapeutics; Boehringer Ingelheim’s new investment in a Vienna production facility; BioNTech’s plans to inaugurate an mRNA manufacturing network in Africa; and the termination of the GSK/Merck KGaA cancer drug partnership.   German drug giant…

Denmark Data has been collected within Danish healthcare for more than 40 years, extending beyond the national patient registry to include a broad range of data points, from IVF to the birth registry, abortion, the weight and height of children, and much more. Danes tend to have a high level of…