Pharmaceutical Executive Digest Europe - April 8, 2009 - (Page 6) Drug Discovery activities that are considered absolutely essential for a project’s progression. Engel: Yes. Æterna Zentaris is now concentrating on the esident & late-stage projects rather than Jürgen Engel, pr Zentaris CEO, Æterna starting new drug discovery programmes; for example, clinical development of our cytotoxic Mikkelsen: I think the trend is in clinical conjugate AEZS-108 versus a new vaccine trials and trying to identify the right project where we have good patent patients for the right treatment; the protection, but are still in preclinical procedures are going to be better-defined development. based on genomics and biomarkers. I think that’s really going to change our What trends are emerging now? view on how the drug discovery process is going to focus on sub-indication or smaller Biondi: I would say what’s emerging now therapeutic areas. We can then identify is more rational drug design or discovery. groups of patients that suffer from one Genomics is certainly coming to fruition disease, which is characterised by certain and, to some extent, we are also bringing biomarkers, and treat the specifically. personalised medicine to fruition. These drugs will be for smaller markets, but Cluzel: The drug discovery industry the efficacy will be higher because the is moving towards characterization ratio between benefit and risk will be of the disease based on biochemical more favourable. Governments will process for an individual or a sub-group most probably be willing to pay more of individuals rather than symptoms, — perhaps for fewer patients, but those which change discovery a little because patients will receive more benefits. identification of the biochemical or At the other side of the range, do we biomolecular detrimental process in want to consider ‘cell therapy’ as a part humans may happen first. A second trend of biologics? I am sure the category that is growing fast is representative will appear reductive to some of the specialists working on this field. In my opinion, the semantic or classification can wait at least until we have good clinical evidence for cell therapy (which I hope will be soon). medicine. You also have vaccines against noninfectious diseases, nanotechnics and the technical delivery of RNA. the number of experiments and maximize the knowledge we extract from them. Soehngen: One of the biggest trends I’m seeing right now is the repositioning of existing Mikkelsen: The priority is drugs. Although they might to do more ex vivo analysis not be chemically new, their on humans earlier in the application is new and that drug discovery process. is as justifiable as creating something from scratch. This Engel: Cash management. probably has a lot to do Companies are trying to with another theme in the do this through building industry, which is essentially Jens Mikkels en, scientific partnerships and alliances, to de-risk. De-risking is a director, Neu roSearch and selecting the most prominent theme these days promising projects to focus all and I think repositioning capacity on. The goal is to still be alive in drugs that have an established safety the next 1 or 2 years. profile and using them in a different indication meets those criteria fairly well Sarin Kouyoumdjian-Gurunlian is press and using them in a different indication manager at marcus evans’s Summits that meets that sentiment fairly well. Division. Pevarello: Observing how the industry is evolving, I see a comeback to early, intelligent in vivo testing in the preclinical setting, having realized that ‘predictive’ in vitro (not to mention in silico) methods are not so predictive. The challenge is, how to make in vivo testing more ‘intelligent’ and, at the same time, reduce What are the top priorities for drug discovery companies at the moment? 1 9 NEWS IT AND MEGAMERGERS 2 FROM THE EDITOR / NEWS 11 4 DRUG DISCOVERY REPORT 7 BRUSSELS REPORT 10 NEWS CALENDAR 12 LAST WORDS 13 APPOINTMENTS http://www.marcusevans.com/ http://www.marcusevans.com/
Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Pharmaceutical Executive Digest Europe - April 8, 2009 Pharmaceutical Executive Digest Europe - April 8, 2009 Contents News From the Editor Drug Discovery Report Brussels Report IT Matters News Calendar Last Words On the Move Pharmaceutical Executive Digest Europe - April 8, 2009 Pharmaceutical Executive Digest Europe - April 8, 2009 - News (Page 1) Pharmaceutical Executive Digest Europe - April 8, 2009 - From the Editor (Page 2) Pharmaceutical Executive Digest Europe - April 8, 2009 - From the Editor (Page 3) Pharmaceutical Executive Digest Europe - April 8, 2009 - Drug Discovery Report (Page 4) Pharmaceutical Executive Digest Europe - April 8, 2009 - Drug Discovery Report (Page 5) Pharmaceutical Executive Digest Europe - April 8, 2009 - Drug Discovery Report (Page 6) Pharmaceutical Executive Digest Europe - April 8, 2009 - Brussels Report (Page 7) Pharmaceutical Executive Digest Europe - April 8, 2009 - Brussels Report (Page 8) Pharmaceutical Executive Digest Europe - April 8, 2009 - IT Matters (Page 9) Pharmaceutical Executive Digest Europe - April 8, 2009 - News (Page 10) Pharmaceutical Executive Digest Europe - April 8, 2009 - Calendar (Page 11) Pharmaceutical Executive Digest Europe - April 8, 2009 - Last Words (Page 12) Pharmaceutical Executive Digest Europe - April 8, 2009 - On the Move (Page 13)
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