Tagged with medicine

Global Speaking to PharmaBoardroom in the context of our upcoming InFocus special report on HIV, Access to Medicine Foundation CEO Jayasree Iyer looks back on pharma’s successes and failures in access to HIV treatment and prevention. Iyer highlights the impact of voluntary licensing of drugs via the Medicines Patent Pool and…

Global Marijn Verhoef, Director of Operations and Research at the Access to Medicine Foundation examines the interconnected challenges of drug shortages and antimicrobial resistance. Verhoef urges decisive and urgent action from the pharma companies that manufacture lifesaving antibiotics and antifungals to ensure that patients can get the right medicine when they…

China Unlike many of its Chinese biotech peers with broad portfolios, Hua Medicine has focused intensively on developing a single product, dorzagliatin, for diabetes. As CEO Li Chen notes, this strategic concentration has allowed Hua Medicine to pioneer in homeostasis control modulation and address specific unmet medical needs in diabetes treatment,…

Africa Medicines for Africa’s Lenias Hwenda reflects on Moderna’s recent decision not to go ahead with plans for a vaccine manufacturing facility in Kenya, and why local production remains crucial to building Africa’s healthcare autonomy.   In a turn of events that is both disappointing yet somehow not surprising, Moderna recently…

Africa Medicines for Africa’s Lenias Hwenda argues that the success of the much-talked-about African Medicines Agency hinges on a critical mass of African national regulators achieving WHO Level 3 maturity status. While acknowledging the importance of international actors in making this happen, Hwenda argues that – if the African Medicines Agency…

Europe The EMA’s Peter Arlett looks back on two years of the Accelerating Clinical Trials in the European Union (ACT EU) initiative which aims to improve the environment for clinical trials in the EU by transforming how trials are initiated, designed, and run. In conversation following DIA Europe 2024 in Brussels,…

Europe PharmaBoardroom was delighted to attend DIA Europe 2024 in Brussels earlier this month, bringing together a veritable who’s-who of the European and global regulatory community. The politicians, regulators, payers, patient advocates, industry representatives, and service providers in attendance were treated to a three-day buffet of engaging panels and townhalls with…

Europe The European Medicines Agency (EMA) recommended 77 drugs for marketing authorisation in 2023, including 39 new active substances, coming up behind the FDA’s record 55 new drug approvals last year. Cancer led the roster of EMA green lights with 25 authorisations, including nine therapies the agency has discerned as major…

Belgium Belgium, one of Europe’s most important countries for biopharmaceutical production and R&D, assumed presidency of the Council of the European Union on the first of January. As part of its Presidency Programme, Belgium has highlighted health as one of its 14 focus areas, with the hope of strengthening the three…

Portugal Portugal boasts a well-developed universal healthcare system and saw healthcare spending increase by 6.2 percent annually between 2016 and 2021, according to the OECD. However, the representatives of innovative medicines manufacturers embedded in the country are keen to point out that access to the latest drugs remains a big issue…

Portugal Speaking to PharmaBoardroom as Janseen is rebranding as Johnson & Johnson Innovative Medicine, managing director for Portugal, Filipa Mota e Costa, discusses the affiliate’s expanded local footprint and its ranking as the number one pharmaceutical company in the country. She also explains Portugal’s market access progress, including the consolidation of…

Europe The European Union’s just-released and first essential medicines list is the latest in a series of measures designed to limit the bloc’s reliance on countries outside its borders and avoid drug shortages. As Elisabeth Stampa of generic and biosimilar lobby group Medicines for Europe recently explained to PharmaBoardroom, this is…