Patricia Van Arnum

Financing to biotech companies in North American and Europe declined in 2012 as debt funding decreased and the IPO market remained weak.

Bristol-Myers Squibb, Novartis, GlaxoSmithKline, Sanofi, and Roche are among the companies expanding biologic-based manufacturing capacity.

The Global Vaccine Action plan maps out a strategy to increase access and R&D for vaccines.

Solid-state chemistry is an important part of drug development, and public research is advancing the field.

Cocrystals are used to improve the performance of APIs that have non-ideal physiochemical properties by cocrystallizing the API with a second compound that modulates the API to provide a way to improve a drug's bioavailability, stability, and processability.

The rejection by India's Supreme Court on Novartis' Glivec/Gleevec (imatinib mesylate) and other recent case law raise important issues on patent strategies for solid forms.

Despite overall manufacturing rationalization in the pharmaceutical/biopharmaceutical industry, the large pharmaceutical companies continue to invest in biologic-based manufacturing. The author provides an update in recent investment activity among the pharmaceutical majors in biologic-drug substance, vaccine, and parenteral drug manufacturing.

Parenteral drug delivery offers a variety of challenges but also opportunities. The author examines recent developments in nanotechnology-based drug delivery and other advances in injection-based drug delivery.

The company expands to add process-development and clinical-manufacturing capabilities at its large-scale bulk biologics facility.