Hong Kong Insighta, formed this year as a 50/50 joint venture between genomics-focused outfit Prenetics and one of the city’s most feted scientific sons, Professor Dennis Lo, is aiming to change the face of cancer care via widespread early detection.   While early detection is widely recognised as crucial to enhancing cancer…

Brazil The DIA Global Annual Meeting 2023 hosted DIA’s first regulatory Town Hall fully dedicated to one regulator from Latin America, as leadership from Brazil’s Health Regulatory Agency, ANVISA, shared updates on the country’s regulatory priorities, the agency’s strategic priorities, and local trends, as well as ongoing regulatory convergence and collaboration initiatives. This…

China Writing in the September 2023 edition of DIA’s Global Forum magazine, Shuting Li of Anhui Jimin Cancer Hospital and Xinfang Fan of Bayer Health Care Ltd. examine how Chinese clinical trials are increasingly focusing on patient engagement and patient centricity.   In recent years, with the Chinese government’s vigorous support…

USA Illumina’s newly appointed CEO, Jacob Thaysen, will take the reins of the gene sequencing giant at the end of September. Falling heir to the difficulties that have plagued Illumina since its botched acquisition of cancer blood test maker Grail, Thaysen will have to confront the company’s legal tangles with the…

USA Biotech and life sciences companies have a habit of clustering together, creating shared ecosystems to drive innovation. For going on 12 years Johnson & Johnson Innovation (JLABS), has been supporting this strength in numbers philosophy, finding, funding and incubating promising startups under a scheme of open innovation in its shared…

Global Amgen has forged a solid position as one of the world’s largest independent biotechnology companies. With a market capitalisation of some USD 130 billion and 27 approved medicines, the US-based firm has come a long way from its original biotech upstart status in 1980. Nonetheless, Amgen has faced obstacles in…

Belgium Encircled by heavyweight life sciences powerhouses of the likes of Germany, France and Switzerland, plucky Belgium nonetheless continues to astonish and project considerable influence when it comes to its abilities to develop, manufacture and sell medicines.   Despite representing only a mid-size marketplace from an in-country commercial perspective, the comparatively…

Hong Kong Almost a decade on from the establishment of a Phase I clinical trial centre in Hong Kong, the city continues to pursue a stronger positioning within the global clinical research landscape. Strengthened by its experience in conducting COVID-19 vaccine trials, the global trends towards clinical research in Asia and more…

China Ongoing geopolitical tensions between China and the West have led the G7 group of countries to warn of the threat of “economic coercion” from China and the US to scrutinise Chinese investment in its biotech sector more closely. Against this backdrop, and despite many of the leading lights in global…

Global Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla is the pharma executive with the biggest impact on social media, according to a new study. While busy industry leaders may not currently place social media engagement at the top of their priority lists, the study – published by specialist digital insights consultancy, Creation Healthcare –…

Europe The European Coalition for Access to Comprehensive Genomic Profiling (ECGP) is a new initiative made up of industry association the European Confederation of Pharmaceutical Entrepreneurs (EUCOPE), molecular diagnostics firms Exact Sciences and Guardant Health, sequencing platform provider Illumina, and drugmakers MSD and Novartis. Here, the coalition lays out its aims…

Global The rise of niche therapies is shaping a more tailored engagement model, driven by data and AI, writes Florian Schnappauf, vice president of enterprise commercial strategy at Veeva Europe.   Last year, orphan drugs accounted for more than a third of Europe’s new drug approvals, and the number of gene…