\"The Asian pharmaceutical industry presents a two-fold opportunity to the troubled world of the global pharma industry.\"
The global pharmaceutical industry today is severely affected by a combination of adverse factors — fast depleting new drugs in the pipeline, mounting costs of developing new drugs, patent expiries of many a blockbuster of yesteryears, intense competition from generics, threat of counterfeits etc. The tale of its woes is indeed endless.
The Asian pharmaceutical industry, however, is a silver lining to this gloomy scenario. The Asian pharmaceutical industry presents a two-fold opportunity to the troubled world of the global pharmaceutical industry. Increasingly prosperous Asian economies, with their billions of population, represent a huge untapped potential market for medicines. The Asian region has also emerged as a low-cost destination for outsourcing R&D and clinical trials, reducing the cost burden for the Big Pharma.
The cover story by Lim Bee Koong, Director, Life Sciences – Clinical, TNT Asia, analyses the huge opportunity in Japan’s clinical trials market, unleashed by recent reforms by the government. Nicholas P. Zemo, Accelovance discusses how small pharma can also benefit from the emerging market in China. Novo Nordisk’s Baoping Wang and Esper Boel share lessons learned by their company in setting up their R&D arm in China. Roche’s Lee E. Babiss distills insights into outsourcing preclinical as well as clinical R&D to China.
Meaghan Lynch of IMS, Australia, discusses how pharmacoeconomics, hitherto perceived as a hurdle can be turned into an effective marketing tool by developing patient-centric models that can be used to demonstrate the value of expensive drugs to physicians as well as patients. Ogilvy’s Joanne Fensome presents incisive analysis of the Asia Pacific market and marketing strategies to deal with it. Shailesh Gadre of ACNielsen ORG IMS profiles the behavior of the Asian consumer to help pharma marketers understand the change. Roman Macaya of Costa Rican National Chamber of Generic Products provides interesting tips on negotiating IPRs with the United States Trade Representative.
Mergers, partnerships and alliances with biotechs is the order of the day in the global pharmaceutical industry today. The R&D spotlight presents insights into the unfolding biopharmaceutical scenario with views from the industry’s thought leaders such as, Kiran Mazumdar- Shaw of Biocon, John Wong of Boston Consulting Group, Heather E Fraser of IBM and Prof. F M Scherer of Harvard University and Tom Newton of Visiongain.
Microsoft’s Rüediger Dorn presents how the software giant’s Digital Pharma Initiative can be strategically deployed to combat a multitude of adverse factors affecting the pharma industry today with the help of IT. Géraldine Andrieux, et al of Yole illustrate the role of Micro and Nanotechnologies in pharma. Bayer’s Martin Gerlach, et al explain how BaychroMAT represents an advancement over existing online analytical measurement platforms. Michael E. Swartz of Waters Corporation discusses how UPLC ensures increase in speed, resolution and sensitivity predicted for liquid chromatography. Avani F. Amin et al of Nirma University of Science & Technology describe how superdisintegrants are an economical alternative in the ODT segment.
Praful R Naik of Bilcare Limited, emphasizes the need for innovations in the pharmaceutical packaging niche. Peter Harrop of IDTechEx provides an Asian perspective to the use of RFID technology in the pharmaceutical industry.
