Category: Working in the industry

Is pharma hiring the right people?

SUMMARY:

  • Older, more experienced employees are being shoved aside in favor of more inexperienced ones.
  • The culture within pharma is driving people away, including new hires.
  • More and more meetings are based on ROI, not the voice of the patient.
  • Don’t hire people who want big salaries; hire people who want to be part of an industry that helps patients.
  • CEOs need to realign their company culture.
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Is pharma hiring the right people?

Biogen is in deep trouble and may not survive

SUMMARY:

  • The Committee on Oversight and Reform and the Committee on Energy and Commerce is investigating the approval process for Biogen’s new Alzheimer’s drug.
  • Janet Woodcock acknowledged on Wednesday her agency may have misstepped in the handling of its polarizing approval of a new Alzheimer’s drug.
  • Biogen undertook a secret campaign, termed Project Onyx, to persuade FDA to approve Aduhelm.
  • Biogen’s reputation may be damaged beyond repair.
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Biogen is in deep trouble and may not survive

Help Wanted: Pharma CEO who is a leader

SUMMARY:

  • Leadership is the ability to influence or guide others.
  • Too many pharma CEOs are bad leaders because they fear failure, losing power, and focus too much on metrics not important to the rank and file.
  • Six out of 10 employees said they feel demotivated by their CEOs; 70% say CEO pay was too high in general.
  • The median CEO of the drug companies outpaced the more modest pay gains of their employees.
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<strong>Help Wanted:</strong> Pharma <strong>CEO</strong> who is a leader

Shareholders versus patients: Who is more important?

SKIMMERS SUMMARY:

  • There is one and only one social responsibility of business–to use its resources and engage in activities designed to increase its profits so long as it stays within the rules of the game, which is to say, engages in open and free competition without deception or fraud. Milton Friedman
  • A newly approved drug to treat Alzheimer’s disease is expected to become a multibillion-dollar expense for Medicare. By one projection, spending on the drug for Medicare patients could end up being higher than the budgets for the Environmental Protection Agency or NASA. (New York Times)
  • If you spend any time reading pharma PR releases, you’ll see over and over again corporate managements stressing the importance of the shareholder. When a new drug is derailed the first thing that pops out is the effect on the company’s stock price, not patients.
  • Can a pharma company serve both shareholders and patients?
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<strong>Shareholders versus patients:</strong><em> Who is more important?</em>

“I don’t trust the FDA anymore”

SKIMMERS SUMMARY:

  • Health experts, including those on an external advisory committee to the FDA, are skeptical that Biogen’s drug will even successfully slow the progression of Alzheimer’s after late-stage clinical trials yielded mixed results and are angry the FDA approved the product.
  • The FDA’s recent approval of aducanumab (Aduhelm) shows just how badly the agency has failed the public.
  • In late April, the FDA’s Oncologic Drugs Advisory Committee reviewed six accelerated approvals — a provisional pathway — involving a group of cancer immunotherapies where clinical trials had failed to confirm that the drugs extended survival or improved quality of life. Yet, in four of the six cases, the advisory committee voted to keep the accelerated approvals intact. (source: Medpage)
  • In response to the FDA’s approval, three members of the Peripheral and Central Nervous System Drugs Advisory Committee who opposed approval of the drug quit the panel in protest.
  • Physicians are signaling that they now want to see the “complete date” regarding new drug approvals.
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“I don’t trust the <strong>FDA</strong> anymore”