Piramal Healthcare signs agreement with Bayer Pharma

Piramal Healthcare Limited has inked a pact to purchase worldwide rights to the molecular imaging research and development portfolio of Bayer Pharma AG via its newly developed arm – Piramal Imaging SA.


The portfolio consists rights to florbetaben, which is presently in the final stages of its Phase 3 clinical trials. First Phase III results will be unveiled in New Orleans at the American Academy of Neurology Annual Meeting on April 25.

Florbetaben is a PET tracer used for the detection of beta-Amyloid plaque deposition in the brain. It is believed that the detection of beta-Amyloid depositions is likely to lead to early diagnosis and more specific treatment of Alzheimer’s disease.

Ajay Piramal, Chairman Piramal Group, said, “This is the second acquisition of late stage assets after our acquisition of assets of BioSyntech in 2011, where we have recently received the European CE mark approval for an innovative bio-orthopaedic product for cartilage repair, BST-CarGel, which enables the company to commercialize BST-CarGel in all of the countries in the European Union. We plan to build a promising portfolio in the Pharma space, including our newly acquired Molecular Imaging assets, which will help us create a global branded Pharma business.”

According to the pact, Piramal will be having the intellectual property (consisting patents, trademarks and know-how), worldwide development, marketing and distribution rights of the lead compound florbetaben.



Ritu Pal
Marketing Executive
BII

SCHOTT AG & KAISHA joint venture in Pharmacy :

MAINZ, Germany and MUMBAI, India, SCHOTT AG and KAISHA Manufacturers Private Ltd., an Indian company, announce the formation of a joint venture, SCHOTT KAISHA Private Ltd. The new joint venture will manufacture primary pharmaceutical packaging made of glass for the Indian market. The joint enterprise will have operations in Mumbai and Daman.

"With this double-digit million euro investment, SCHOTT continues on its course to growth and quality leadership. Udo Ungeheuer, Chairman of the Board of Management of SCHOTT AG.

SCHOTT, the technology group based in Mainz, Germany, will hold a 50 percent share in the company and contribute its technological expertise in manufacturing high quality ampoules, vials, syringes and cartridges in a global environment. KAISHA will bring in its existing sites and manufacturing capacities.

SCHOTT and KAISHA have worked successfully for many years in a buyer-supplier relationship. SCHOTT supplied the pharmaceutical glass tubing to Kaisha for converting them into primary pharmaceutical packaging products

The pharmaceutical packaging market in India is growing by approximately 10 to 15 percent per year, particularly in the higher quality segments, according to industry analysis. India has the largest number of U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved plants outside of the United States, for example. The joint venture will support Indian pharmaceutical companies in upgrading products for international markets by supplying pharmaceutical packaging at an international quality level from the Indian production site. For this purpose, SCHOTT KAISHA will build production capacity for Standard Line ampoules and vials, which will be in production in the fourth quarter 2009.

SCHOTT Pharmaceutical Packaging is one of the world's leading suppliers of parenteral packaging for the pharmaceutical industry. More than 500 production lines in 11 production sites worldwide produce more than 6 billion syringes, vials, ampoules, cartridges and special articles made of tubing glass or polymer. All production sites of Business Segment SCHOTT Pharmaceutical Packaging operate in a GMP environment and the products comply with the international standards USP, EP and JP.

Author

Yash Shrivastava

Marketing Executive

GENE EXPRESSION ON ARRAY TOOLS

Microarray is an important part of life science domain to analyze the expressions of genes and this is due to the rapid progress of Human Genome Project and Biotechnology. The use of gene expression profiling has increased dramatically but serious problems are in the analysis of such data. Valid analysis of DNA microarray experiments requires substantial statistical knowledge but statisticians with expertise in microarray methods are in short supply and not available to many laboratories.

BRB-Array Tools was developed in an attempt to broadly share the knowledge gained by biostatisticians of the Biometric Research Branch of the National Cancer Institute in a decade of involvement in collaborative microarray investigations and in the development of statistical methodology for microarray data. The primary objectives of BRB-Array Tools are:

(1) To provide scientists with software that guides them to utilize valid and powerful methods appropriate for their experimental objectives without requiring them to learn a programming language.

(2) To encapsulate into software the experience of professional statisticians who read and critically evaluate the extensive published literature of new analytic and computational methods.

(3) To facilitate education of scientists in statistical methods for the analysis of DNA microarray data.

BRB-Array Tools is an integrated software system for the comprehensive analysis of DNA microarray experiments. It was developed by professional biostatisticians experienced in the design and analysis of DNA microarray studies and incorporates methods developed by leading statistical laboratories. The software is designed for use by biomedical scientists who wish to have access to state-of-the-art statistical methods for the analysis of gene expression data and to receive training in the statistical analysis of high dimensional data. The software provides the most extensive set of tools available for predictive classifier development and complete cross-validation. It offers extensive links to genomic websites for gene annotation and analysis tools for pathway analysis. An archive of over 100 datasets of published microarray data with associated clinical data is provided and BRB-Array Tools automatically imports data from the Gene Expression Omnibus public archive at the National Center for Biotechnology Information. So anyone who is working for expression of genes can go for it.

Author Name

Bashah Javed

Faculty Bioinformatics

Bioinformatics Institute of India

Marketing Trend in Biotechnological concept:

With vast amounts of information being generated due to advancements in biotechnology, there arises a need to effectively control and manage the information so generated. Information Technology provides a mechanism more popularly known as bioinformatics, which facilitates this process. Information technology has become a critical factor in pharmaceutical research and development .Bioinformatics is the computer assisted data management discipline that helps us gather, analyze, and represent information in order to educate ourselves, understand life’s processes in the healthy and disease states, and find new or better drugs. This field has exploded out of the world of molecular biology and the Human Genome Project. Pharmaceutical companies are achieving increased research efficiency by the introduction of new approaches to the design, synthesis, screening and optimization of drug candidates. IT is an important support function for all of those activities and there are certain functions and operations that cannot be performed without IT. Informatics represents the deployment of Information Technology to manage, analyze, and store biological data. Beyond data management, informatics represents the only way to analyze large pools of genomic information. Informatics finds application in Target Validation, Lead Optimization, Exploratory development etc.

Bioinformatics plays a key role in functionalities such as gather, store, classify, analyze, and distribute biological information derived from sequencing and functional analysis projects. In Bioinformatics, the real long-term value lies in converting the data into useful therapeutics and hence efforts are on to make the bioinformatics tools as standardized and easy as possible, which is similar to the development of standardized computer operating systems. Most publicly held informatics companies had initial public offerings in the second half of 2000. Since then, the biotechnology index has suffered a major setback, and informatics stocks have reacted in sympathy mostly to the downside. Growth in the informatics industry is largely contingent on continued spending on drug discovery. The market for Bioinformatics isn’t large enough to support a company built around one or two high-cost software programs targeted to a relatively small user group. As we assess the market or potential market of Bioinformatics we must consider the strategies effective to reach different, or all, parts of the potential market. Strategies focused at the high margin big Pharma market (limited in opportunities) or strategies designed to embrace all biological scientist (but of reduced or variable margin). Also, certain bioinformatics-based companies are leveraging their technologies to become fully integrated drug discovery operations. Other bioinformatics companies are merging with drug discovery companies, resulting in a substitute technological approach to drug development.

The convergence of biotechnology and computing has already resulted in a number of alliances, which could result in mergers between previously distinct industries. In future, we may see a combination of pharmaceutical and computing firms bringing together their research as well as IT capabilities. In future we may see alliances between pharmaceutical, software as well as firms, which have strong marketing capabilities. The field would also witness the entry of new players such as computing and telecommunication firms. The challenge facing bioinformatics researchers is simply making sense of the plethora of genomic data while constantly refining their technology, research approaches. The real opportunities are in finding out how all the shards of information relate to one another, and what this means for real world applications. Recognizing bioinformatics as central to accelerating drug discovery, big pharma and biotech firms are expected to invest heavily in internal capabilities, or meet their needs through outsourcing. As the market matures, collaborative industry initiatives may drive even more bioinformatics demand. Innovation will depend on the integration of databases across functions and across companies.

Ritu Pal

Marketing Executive