Pharma Industry

New tools and innovative developments in technology have played a key role in the field of medicine. One such technology that is enabling great amount of efficiencies in pharmaceutical development is mobile phones. This technology, which has revolutionised sharing of information digitally, has wide applications in the pharmaceutical industry.

Mobile applications offer greater benefits like making R&D process more efficient and costeffective, providing a faster path to trials, assisting investigators in administering trials, etc. Meanwhile, improved research aided by faster data collection and integration a novel approach for prevention and treatment of cancer has been developed.

According to the American Cancer Society, in 2011 about 1.6 million new cases of cancer will be diagnosed and approximately 570,000 deaths will occur due to cancer in the United States.

Cancer immunotherapy that includes development of prophylactic and therapeutic vaccines is designed to reduce the burden of disease.

The cover story, in this issue of Pharma Focus Asia, by Mayurkumar Kalariya and Mansoor Amiji from School of Pharmacy, Northeastern University, USA provides insights into how cancer immunotherapy boosts immune response to balance shifts from tolerance to rejection. The article also talks about the development of different combination therapies for cancer treatment, challenges involved in cancer immunotherapy and the future outlook of cancer vaccines.

This issue also covers how robust analytical characterization techniques are employed to develop robust approaches for effective characterization of biosimilars, complexities involved in manufacturing biologics, emerging trends in functional service outsourcing and many more.