1. In Vivo

Commercializing Rare Disease Therapies Is Getting Tougher

 
• By Jane Barlow, Roger Longman, and Rob O'Brien

For an industry increasingly dominated by these drugs, commercial programs need to take on the risk once reserved for development.  

Things are getting tougher
Rare disease therapies are becoming more difficult to commercialize • Source: Shutterstock

Historically, if you were to pick a symbolic hero of the drug industry’s rise to prominence it might be Alexander Fleming, who discovered penicillin; Jonas Salk, who developed the polio vaccine; or maybe the Nobel prize winners James Black, who developed the first beta-blocker and H2 antagonist; or Gertrude Elion, who catalyzed the development of antivirals. Their discoveries, after all, resulted in medicines that successfully treated millions of heretofore untreatable patients.

Today’s hero, on the other hand, would be Henri Termeer, the late CEO of Sanofi Genzyme and the...

More from Growth

More from In Vivo

Podcast: ADDF’s Karen Harris On Investing In Alzheimer’s Like A VC

 
• By David Wild

A discussion with Karen Harris, CFO of the Alzheimer's Drug Discovery Foundation, about the foundation's investment strategy, biotech and investor sentiment at the recent BIO conference and what innovations give her hope for Alzheimer's patients.

Turning Defense Into Attack: Snapshots Of A Changing Medtech Market And How To Respond

 
• By Ashley Yeo

Against a backdrop of shifting trade policies, the end of multilateral market approaches and renewed focus on supply chain resilience, medtechs are doubling down on innovation in products and processes – using AI – and keeping unmet needs and outcomes in the center of the target.

AI Agents Set To Reshape Biopharma’s Workforce And Operations

 
• By David Wild

While biopharma companies experiment with genAI, agentic AI is rapidly shifting the work paradigm towards one of autonomous digital workers that can handle entire process flows.