BIOtechNow

There was no shortage of health hot topics this year, but as 2016 comes to a close, we wanted to highlight our most read stories. In chronological order, here are this year’s top five favorite health blogs: BIO Releases Largest Study Ever on Clinical Development Success Rates – Conducted in partnership with Amplion and Biomedtracker, this study generated the most comprehensive analysis, to date, of biopharmaceutical R&D success. Study author and BIO’s Senior Director of Read More 

2016 was a year of challenges and accomplishments for the Industrial Biotechnology Industry. Several issues, especially the Renewable Fuel Standard, were up for discussion and debate. Below are 5 noteworthy Industrial Biotechnology events that happened in 2016, making it a memorable year for the industry. Renewable Fuel Standard – After MUCH delay, the US Environmental Protection Agency finally released the 2017 renewable fuel volume obligations (and the 2018 volume obligations for biomass-based diesel) on November 22, Read More 

Everyone loves sugar! According to the USDA, global sugar consumption for 2016/17 is forecast at a record 174 million metric tons. In 2015/16, it is predicted that approximately 10.9 million metric tons of sugar will be consumed in the United States alone. With Halloween right around the corner, sugar is certainly on everyone’s mind. According to the National Confectioners Association, the sales of candy are projected to be around $2.6 billion during the 2016 Halloween season. Read More 

Dr. W. Lesser, Susan E. Lynch Professor in Science and Business at the Dyson School of Applied Economics and Management at Cornell University, recently published a blog arguing that the New York PTA’s proposal to go GMO-free in the State school meals program would come with a hefty financial burden. Dr. Lesser’s piece was published in the Cornell Alliance for Science blog page and an except can be found below: The purpose here is to put a Read More 

Meet Chirs LeMasters, 2017 BIO International Convention Program Committee Chair. Chris is the CEO of Promosome LLC a synthetic biology company that was founded by Nobel Laureate Dr. Gerald Edelman, based on his work on mRNA translation at Scripps. He joined the company last year to transition Promosome into a therapeutics company, developing a pipeline of hard-to-express therapeutic proteins. Promosome is also pursuing partnerships with companies developing nucleic acid therapeutics (gene therapy, RNA vaccines, mRNA therapeutics) based Read More 

After months of criticism, including some from BIO, the Institute for Clinical and Economic Review (ICER) released a document that tries to address many of the legitimate and persistent concerns that have been raised. We appreciate that ICER is taking such criticism more seriously, and recently opened up its methodology to more public comment.  However, after reviewing the document, it remains clear to us that ICER still doesn’t quite get why so many organizations, including Read More 

The One Health Initiative is a movement to forge co-equal, all-inclusive collaborations between physicians, osteopathic physicians, veterinarians, dentists, nurses and other scientific-health and environmentally related disciplines, including the American Medical Association, American Veterinary Medical Association, American Academy of Pediatrics, American Nurses Association, American Association of Public Health Physicians, the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), and the U.S. National Read More 

The Orphan Drug Act has been a tremendous success and addressed a market failure by providing incentives to bring new treatments to those suffering with rare diseases. That’s why I was deeply troubled by Friday’s unfair article in The Washington Post targeting the Orphan Drug Act through selective and unsubstantiated attacks that seem designed to undermine this bipartisan and hugely successful regime that has helped so many patients with rare diseases live longer and healthier Read More 

Today, BIO releases Points to Consider on Truthful and Non-Misleading Product Communication. This document advances the dialogue on this issue toward achieving the shared aim of getting the right medicine to the right patient at the right time. The current “Information Age” holds significant promise to improve the ability of stakeholders to make well-informed healthcare decisions.  Never before has information about healthcare interventions, including innovative medicines, been so readily available from so many different sources and through Read More 

August is National Immunization Awareness Month (NIAM), which is a great opportunity to recognize the importance of vaccination. The National Public Health Information Coalition (NPHIC), in collaboration with Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, reminds us that safe and effective immunizations represent one of the greatest public health accomplishments of the 20th century. Immunizations are important because they not only protect the person receiving the vaccine, but Read More 

Every year, more than 40,000 American adults are hospitalized or die due to vaccine-preventable diseases. Treating vaccine-preventable diseases among adults also costs the U.S. tens of billions of dollar every year. As the U.S. population ages at an unprecedented rate, with 78 million Baby Boomers becoming seniors, improving rates of adult vaccination is a national imperative. In a new white paper, The Value and Imperative of Quality Measures for Adult Vaccines, renowned vaccine experts — Read More 

The pages on the calendar have quickly turned and July is again upon us.  For most, July means freedom from school, a summer vacation, or celebrating our nation’s independence.  But those of us in the sarcoma community know that this month means something else as well.  As we know, July is Sarcoma Awareness Month. Why do we have a Sarcoma Awareness Month?  Simply, sarcoma is still considered to be the “forgotten cancer.”  Our efforts to encourage Read More 

Many of the biopharmaceutical policy proposals laid out by President Obama in his JAMA article (United States Health Care Reform: Progress to Date and Next Steps) are simply a rehash of tired, old ideas that have been rejected by bipartisan majorities in the Congress for years. The plans he lays out would do little or nothing to improve our shared goal of increasing patients’ access to medicines and could impede the development of new medical Read More 

BIO members may be interested in the upcoming Conference on Clinical Research for Rare Diseases, hosted by the Rare Diseases Clinical Research Network.  The Rare Diseases Clinical Research Network is an initiative of the Office of Rare Diseases Research, NCATS, funded through a collaboration between NCATS and the NIH.  The conference will be held on November 3, 2016 at the Washington Marriott Wardman Park. There are more than 6,800 diseases classified as “rare” (defined as Read More 

The House of Representatives has overwhelmingly passed the Fostering Innovation Act (H.R. 4139), a key capital markets priority for BIO. The bipartisan legislation was introduced by Reps. Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ) and Michael Fitzpatrick (R-PA). The JOBS Act provides emerging growth companies (EGCs) with a five-year exemption from Section 404(b) of Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX), which requires a costly external attestation of a company’s internal financial controls. The Fostering Innovation Act would extend the JOBS Act’s SOX 404(b) Read More