Drug development

This option provided a strategic fit for both parties involved. As shown through Merck’s objective of wanting to deliver the value of drugs, the PBM acquisition is the most effective method to do so. For a company like Merck to develop its own pharmacy benefit competencies would take more resources and more time, of which the company did not have. As the pharmaceutical industry is rapidly growing and changing, Merck is unable to invest in this avenue. By eliminating the intermediary between drug manufacturer and the customers, Merck was able to realize increased profits and would make the two channel distribution aforementioned more effective. The major benefit to acquiring PBMs was the access to information, which could prevent inappropriate drug interactions. Thus, additional cost savings in the long run. Moreover, PBMs could provide drugs at a lower cost. Although an acquisition was vital, Merck and Medco should remain as separate organizations with different cultures as Merck’s strengths lie within the medical field while Medco’s strengths lie within its strong ties with its clients. By acquiring Medco, Merck is able to diversify and enhance their chances of survival in the changing market and move away from being a product…

Rational Drug Discovery Drug companies are continuously discovering new compounds to add to the pharmaceutical world. Rational drug discovery, or drug design, has provided a great advantage to finding new medications compared to older methods of discovery. With years of guesstimating and predicting how to create the perfect prescription, drugs have been identified in numerous ways. Drugs have been discovered and named through multiple encounters of trial-and-error or with simple luck. Thorough…

in medical devices and drugs, progress for research and development for new drugs or treatments is painstakingly slow. Like software updates or patches, the development for treatment has seen incremental therapeutics, such as small changes to existing formulations but rarely does the public see any ground breaking discovery and even rarer still are cures which are a small step away to being considered as unicorns. There is a perverse notion that pharmaceutical companies are deliberately hiding…

that EpiPen has over the industry of epinephrine. After a company creates a unique drug, it is issued a patent that prevents any other sellers from entering the industry, giving the single company the power to charge whatever price that they see fit. Patents give pharmaceutical companies monopolies…

Merck’s SWOT Analysis The pharmaceutical industry is highly competitive, as one of the top five companies only accounting for 18% of the market share, Merck is one of the largest pharmaceutical companies in the world that is a research driven company. At product market level, companies have been forced to compete in terms of original brands and generic drugs. In markets targeting price sensitive customers, generic drugs are generally preferred. By contrast, other company products compete based…

assessment was to evaluate how Pfizer uses analytics as it relates to decision making. The assessment focuses on the organization as a whole, with interviews from two colleagues in two different business units: Development Operations (GIP) and the Business Analytics & Insight (GEP). Overall, it is evident that Pfizer, as a consequence of being a heavily regulated pharmaceutical industry, must use scientific data to ensure that the products we make are safe and effective. My assessment concluded…

The main goal of Regulatory Strategic planning is to develop the drug, biologic or medical device and get marketing authorization as well as maintain post marketing authorization in preferred countries. A regulatory strategy is an official document that supports the regulatory happenings to offer a new product or improved an existing product. A regulatory strategy begins with the alliance with a cross functional team to recognize significant questions related to the product. All questions…

make it available to the large population. Biosimilars also undergo for testing at all stages of drug development from analytical, non-clinical, and clinical, which is suggestively more than the small-molecule generic drugs but less requirement than new biologics. The US FDA is authorizing the biosimilars under the Biologic Price Competition and Innovation…

Nano Precision Medical is an early-stage start-up company located in Emeryville, CA. Its founders are Adam Mendelsohn, Kayte Fischer, and Lily Peng. Their entrepreneurial story began in December 2007 while they were part of a Joint Graduate Group in Bioengineering under the supervision of Professor Tejal Desai at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). Adam Mendelsohn, Ph.D. was working on “describing new treatment options for Type 1 diabetes through the immuno-isolated…

The purpose of this paper is to examine the ethical questions related to the rights of terminally ill patients to receive experimental medications by participating in clinical trials which they were not pre-selected for entrance into the study. I will attempt to evaluate the implications from a rights and utilitarian perspective, whilst examining these issues from a multitude of different stakeholders’ perspectives. The ethical questions posed by this case were ultimately brought in front of…