This Week’s Biotech Highlights

This week in biotech was all about lines. Not any kind of illicit lines, and not the most direct route between two points, just your traditional figurative delineations:

Line drawn: Since 2004, there have been increasing numbers of instances where pharma companies have compensated generics manufacturers in settlements of patent litigation initiated by the pharmas. The U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC, tasked alongside DOJ with enforcing antitrust law) in general, and its current Competition Bureau Director in particular, does not like these settlements. This week, the FTC published a report that claims that these settlements result in substantial extra delay in getting generic products into the market; and the European Commission requested information on the deals from several major pharma companies.

Line blurred: On the other hand, it’s not entirely clear who is who anymore. Pfizer sells about 600 generic medicines, including at least 40 that it made a deal for this week that it will sell in the United States; and Teva now reportedly gets about 30% of its revenue from branded drugs.

Line blurred: The Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation stepped up its artificial pancreas program, collaborating with two industry players to bring a device to market and to bring to fruition the lab research it has funded for the last 4 years. This is the second project by the JDRF recently that has the foundation taking a direct hand in commercial development.

Though more lines were blurred than drawn, one thing was clear: 2010 is looking much better for biotech than 2009 did. Keep an eye on the Cross-Border Biotech Blog and @crossborderbio on Twitter for the latest.

Oh, and one other thing that’s clear: Peter Carrescia’s new blog, Tech Disruptions, is one to keep an eye on. The first few posts are (not surprisingly) more tech than biotech; but Peter says he’s interested broadly in change vs. status quo and in predicting change, and that is an engaging subject for IT people and biotech people and anyone else at the cutting edge.