Announcing the GMDP Academy
In its 7th year of outstanding stewardship, as a global center of education and training for Medicines Development professionals, the IFAPP Academy is embarking on a landmark transformation.
Author: GMDP Academy Editorial Board
The Lancet at 200: a start, but more to do
The year 2023 celebrates the 200th anniversary of The Lancet, a significant achievement for the publication. The first issue of the new year includes an editorial that both reflects on the past and emphasizes important commitments for the publication in the future. We have included a portion of the editorial below.
AI drug design could be used as a chemical weapon
When a pharmaceutical company looked into whether its artificial-intelligence (AI) tools could be used to design biochemical weapons, the results horrified its researchers. Scientists used a machine-learning model that penalizes toxicity and inverted it to pursue compounds similar to the nerve agent VX, one of the most toxic chemical weapons ever created.
COVID lessons from Japan: the right message empowers citizens
Through six waves of COVID-19 in Japan, the number of cases and deaths per capita has been significantly lower than in other G7 countries. This is despite having the world’s oldest population and being densely packed. Yes, Japan has high vaccination rates, especially for older people, and masking is common. But neither of these fully explains such vast differences. Deaths were low even before vaccines were available, and masks are common across Asia. Japan has sought to understand the spread and risks of the disease and apply that to minimizing deaths and hospitalizations while maintaining social and economic activities. Trade-offs among these factors can be uneasy. Strong social pressure probably helped to boost protective measures, such as mask-wearing, and minimized risky behaviors. Overall, the government quickly equipped its people with information to take protective action and avoided rigid prescriptions.
Corporate Investors in Primary Care — Profits, Progress, and Pitfalls
On July 21, 2022, Amazon announced plans to acquire One Medical — a primary care practice with nearly 200 locations serving more than 700,000 patients — for $3.9 billion. The deal, if approved, would represent Amazon’s largest payment for a health care company to date. On September 5, 2022, CVS Health confirmed its acquisition of Signify Health, which offers in-home and traditional primary care, for around $8 billion.
Nature’s biggest news stories of 2022
Many journals take advantage of the year’s end to synthesize the last twelve months of events in the articles they’ve published throughout the year. Here are what Nature has selected to feature as its biggest life science news stories for 2022.
Statue of Henrietta Lacks will be erected in Virginia
In 1951, Henrietta Lacks, a young black mother in Baltimore, Maryland, began experiencing pain in her abdomen and abnormal bleeding. She was examined by gynaecologists at Johns Hopkins Hospital, and they discovered a large mass on her cervix. Without informing her or asking for permission, doctors sent a sample of Mrs Lacks’ tumour to a lab for medical research before treating her for aggressive cervical cancer. At that time, it was common practice for doctors to harvest samples from their patients for further medical research.
New gene therapy for hemophilia
EMA has recommended granting a conditional marketing authorization in the European Union (EU) for Hemgenix (etranacogene dezaparvovec) for the treatment of severe and moderately severe hemophilia B in adults who do not have factor IX inhibitors. Haemophilia B is an inherited disorder characterized by an increased bleeding tendency due to a partial or complete deficiency of coagulation factor IX. The deficiency of factor IX is the result of mutations of the respective clotting factor gene. Prolonged bleeding episodes in patients with hemophilia B can lead to serious complications, such as bleeding into joints, muscles or internal organs, including the brain. Hemophilia B is a rare debilitating disease affecting approximately 1 in 20,000 to 50,000 live male newborns.
CNS Research: Lecanemab in Early Alzheimer’s disease
The accumulation of soluble and insoluble aggregated amyloid-beta (Aβ) may initiate or potentiate pathologic processes in Alzheimer’s disease. Lecanemab, a humanized IgG1 monoclonal antibody that binds with high affinity to Aβ soluble protofibrils, is being tested in persons with early Alzheimer’s disease.
The recently launched European Groundshot Commission, which includes new data on cancer research activity and outcomes across Europe during the past 12 years, proposes an evidence-based, patient-centered cancer research roadmap for Europe.
Global ranking of pharmaceutical companies
At the end of the year, specialized companies prepare rankings of companies’ global turnover. We’ve included an interesting figure of the top 19 global pharmaceutical companies in 2021.