Friday, February 8, 2019 Daily Archives

Cell therapy firms and vendors look to automation technologies

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Nearly 90% of cell therapy firms plan to invest further into automation technologies within five years, a KNect365 survey finds. KNect365’s Life Sciences Cell Therapy Automation Survey 2018 collated the responses of 158 life science executives and engineers. When asked to what extent companies are currently automating their process, the results ranged from 14% not using automation at all to 7% claiming all their processes are automated. This averages out to around 52% of processes being automated. Process automation (for…

February 8, 2019

Takeda post-Shire could divest 25% of its business

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Having acquired Shire last month, Takeda is planning to divest non-core assets, representing up to 25% of its business. Takeda closed the $62 billion (€55 billion) acquisition of Shire on January 8th and according to Takeda CFO Costa Saroukos, the “integration of the two companies is now progressing as planned.†Shire brings Takeda greater geography and scale, creating a company with around 35 manufacturing sites, but on a call last week to discuss third quarter FY2018 results, up to a…

February 8, 2019

Roche looks to delivery device to keep Lucentis biosimilars at bay

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Roche says its Port Delivery System will keep Lucentis (ranibizumab) competitive against upcoming biosimilar competition. Lucentis pulled in CHF 1.66 billion ($1.66 billion) in US sales for Roche in 2018, up 18% on the year before. The drug is marketed in Europe by fellow Swiss firm Novartis. The firm attributed the increase to the “ongoing rollout of prefilled syringes and sales increases in all approved indications.†The monoclonal antibody, approved for eye conditions including neovascular (‘wet’) age-related macular degeneration, macular…

February 8, 2019