Editor’s letter
It has been a busy month in the world of pharmaceuticals; a clinical trial went badly wrong resulting in the tragic death of one participant, regulators gave the green light to the first biosimilar of Pfizer/Amgen’s Enbrel and, here in the UK, the health minister squared up for a fight with junior doctors – again. We cover these and all the other top stories in our News Review.
Here at PharmaTimes we learned a lot this month. In Shock Therapy (p26) we discovered that cheap nerve stimulators could replace blockbuster drugs in the treatment of severe inflammatory conditions including rheumatoid arthritis and irritable bowel syndrome. We also found out that while the majority of healthcare professionals favour the disclosure of payments made by pharma companies, a debate is raging in the industry about what this new level of transparency will look like. Read about it in An Open Relationship (p31).
Plus, our ever-opinionated SmartViews section taught us a few lessons. In A Problem Shared? (p15) KPMG advisor Sophia Turner makes the case for companies sharing their preclinical data in order to boost R&D productivity, while regular contributor Ana Nicholls from the Economist Intelligence Unit looks ahead at the year to come in A Bumpy Road Ahead (p20).
In our interview-based SmartPeople section, we tell three important stories; lupus patient and advocate Sally Kay (p41) talks about her personal experience with the disease, Mark Samuels from the National Institute for Health Research predicts great things ahead for UK R&D (p34) and Creston Health head Nicky Walsby tells pharma it needs to think outside the box if it wants to connect to the consumer (p36).
I hope your enjoy this issue of PharmaTimes.
Hugh Gosling
editor
