Highlights of the important and interesting in the world of healthcare:
Healthcare CEOs earn big bucks. Healthcare company chief executives took home the biggest paychecks — a median of $10 million — of any industry covered by the recent Wall Street Journal CEO Compensation Study, according to the news organization’s Health blog. CEOs from Thermo Fisher Scientific, Boston Scientific and Johnson & Johnson were among the top 20 in the list. UnitedHealth Group CEO Stephen Hemsley got the biggest raise last year.
Pfizer relaunches global innovation centers network. Drug giant Pfizer has once again cast its eyes on academia as part of its R&D strategy, signing an $85-million deal with the University of California that marks the first under its newborn Global Centers for Therapeutic Innovation network, according to PharmaTimes.
New lupus drug Benlysta endorsed. An FDA advisory panel overwhelmingly endorsed Benlysta, developed by Human Genome Sciences and GlaxoSmithKline, as the first new drug to treat lupus in more than a half century after weighing what some members called marginal effectiveness against the desperate needs of lupus patients, the New York Times reports.
Building better biologics. South San Francisco-based Sutro Biopharma is the latest startup to cash in on the “bio-better” craze, raising $36.5 million in a Series C venture round led by Skyline Ventures for making better biologic drugs that don’t rely on incubating strands of DNA inside living cells, according to Xconomy San Francisco.
Roche cutting jobs to stay competitive. Roche is to cut 4,800 jobs — 6 per cent of its workforce — to save $2.41 billion a year as the Swiss pharmaceuticals group became the latest drugs company to react to a tougher market, reports the Financial Times.
Pharma’s electronic record audit delayed. An FDA plan to audit the growing use of electronic records by the pharmaceutical industry has been delayed by at least several months by bureaucratic snags, according to the Pharmalot blog.
A Deep-dive Into Specialty Pharma
A specialty drug is a class of prescription medications used to treat complex, chronic or rare medical conditions. Although this classification was originally intended to define the treatment of rare, also termed “orphan” diseases, affecting fewer than 200,000 people in the US, more recently, specialty drugs have emerged as the cornerstone of treatment for chronic and complex diseases such as cancer, autoimmune conditions, diabetes, hepatitis C, and HIV/AIDS.
Cancer therapies get investment. Maryland biopharmaceutical company Micromet has raised $70.5 million for its antibody-based therapies to treat cancer.
Photo courtesy of Flickr user AMagill.
