Pharmaceutical Jobs

The Australian government has shared that up to $100 million will be invested in new, innovative companies as part of its Innovation Investment Fund (IIF).

The Gillard Labor Government will support private sector investors to help ensure that new business ideas that originate in Australian firms and research organisations compete in global markets.

The IIF programme licences venture capital fund managers to operate an Innovation Investment Fund. The IIF programme does not invest directly in ventures. The programme is a venture capital programme that supports new innovation funds and fund managers with expertise in early-stage venture capital investing. It co-invests with private sector investors in venture capital funds to grow early-stage companies to commercialise the outcomes of Australia’s strong research capability.

Announcing the final tranche of IIF Round three, Senator Kim Carr said the $100 million will lead to $200 million of venture capital for early-stage investments. It offers a bridge to larger venture capital funds with the capacity to make significant longer-term investments.

“Through the IIF, the Australian Government aims to increase investment in growth companies and connect them with international markets,” Senator Carr said. “Venture capital has been shown to be an effective mechanism for commercialising innovative technologies into new products, services and processes.”

“We not only want to create high-value jobs and products that will boost productivity, but also enhance our international reputation for innovation and quality research.”

The initiative is resulting in new Pharmaceutical Jobs.

Senator Carr highlighted Sydney-based Pharmaxis as a successful technology company supported by the Fund.

“Pharmaxis is a great example. It is expanding its advanced research and manufacturing facilities in Sydney with $10 million of new equipment to make its cystic fibrosis treatment and an anti-asthma drug,” Carr said.

Pharmaxis Chief Executive Officer Dr Alan Robertson said: “R&D works better when it can be coupled directly to manufacturing.”

One of Pharmaxis’ backers, GBS Venture Partners, acknowledges that IIF gave it its start in the venture capital industry. GBS Managing Director Dr Geoff Brooke said the company now manages more than $400 million for investors, including major Australian superannuation funds.

Applications for IIF tranche four close on Monday 2 July 2012.

The Gilbert, Arizona, Economic Development Office (EDO) is working on plans to attract companies and researchers, a move that could result in new biotech jobs.

Operating under a mandate from its Town Council, the EDO organised citizen work groups and held numerous meetings with business and community leaders to discuss opportunities, challenges, and initiatives to enhance its economic policies, workforce development, and marketing and branding. As a result of the Gilbert Town Council mandate and Summer 2011 work group meetings, it was determined that Gilbert should focus its economic development strategy on science and technology industries with an emphasis on Biotech & Life Sciences.

“Attracting companies from the biotech and life science industry sectors will strengthen Gilbert economically and provide immeasurable future benefits to our community as we work to become a net importer of these jobs over the next 20 years,” said Gilbert Mayor John Lewis.

Economic development consultant Dr. Ioanna Morfessis was contracted by Gilbert to facilitate collaboration and prioritise recommendations within the work groups to help Gilbert achieve its goals.

Dr. Morfessis, founder of the international consulting firm, IO.INC, said that this five year Strategic Economic Development Plan will effectively channel Gilbert’s resources into producing positive, measured results to meet its goals.

Located in the southeast valley of the Phoenix metropolitan area, Gilbert, Arizona, is the seventh largest community in Arizona.

A new initiative in Washington is expected to result in new biotech jobs.

Washington Governor Chris Gregoire and the Washington State Department of Commerce have announced that help is on the way for the state’s small businesses seeking new sources of financing to grow and create jobs. Commerce was recently awarded $19.7 million from the U.S. Department of Treasury to launch the Washington Small Business Credit Initiative – three new programmes designed to spur investment and lending to businesses throughout the state.

One of these programmes is W Fund ($5 million) projected to be a $25+ million venture fund organised to invest in early-stage technology, life science and information technology companies emerging from University of Washington and other leading science research centers across Washington State.

Fund recipients will be headquartered in Washington State, creating jobs and economic opportunity in key growth sectors.

“We believe that the W Fund will fuel critical mass in key sectors such as life science, and strategic nascent sectors for WA such as Clean Tech, capitalising on the most promising new inventions developed at the University of Washington and research institutions across the state,” said Linden Rhoads, Vice Provost, Commercialisation, University of Washington.

Rhoads added, “This is a great example of the state, and Department of Commerce being really sophisticated in their use of federal stimulus money to leverage private investment dollars to insure that there is sufficient earliest stage capital in the local economy.”

The Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry (ABPI) has welcomed the government’s decision to come up with a number of measures aimed at driving growth in the U.K.’s life sciences sector.

The plan includes a research fund worth £180 million which will be open to universities and small and medium-sized enterprises.

“(The) Government’s support for our industry is a significant step to opening up the NHS to research – this will make the UK a more inviting place to locate research and, therefore, investment. Ultimately, this leads to a better service for patients,” said Stephen Whitehead, ABPI Chief Executive. “We welcome the support for the whole life science ecosystem; including the gap funding for early stage research and SMEs. As the pharmaceutical industry comes under new global pressures, the survival of the sector is reliant on this health ecosystem and this initiative should set the UK apart as a front runner.”

The development is also expected to result in new Pharmaceutical Jobs.

Highlights from the announcement include:

• The automatic inclusion of NICE recommended treatments on formulary. This means that clinicians will truly have the choice to prescribe the medicine that they think most appropriate for their patients.
• The establishment of a NICE Implementation Collaborative (NIC) to support prompt implementation of NICE guidance, bringing all partners into the process of helping with barriers to patient access.
• Development and publication of the innovation scorecard allowing a clear understanding of whether the reforms to NICE are really working.
• An emphasis on clinical trials, aiming to re-establish the UK as a thriving centre for research and exploiting the benefits of this for patients.
• Better access to health data (with appropriate protection for patient confidentiality) opens up the UK’s unique offering to provide a true picture of health challenges and benefits.
• The commitment to earlier access to medicines where appropriate, allows patients to benefit earlier from promising medicines whilst improving what we know about how these medicines work.
• Plans to simplify regulation, reducing gold plating and unnecessary bureaucracy will help industry move further and faster, and make the UK a more attractive place to locate business. The initiative of a group of experts including industry to meet regularly to discuss regulation is welcomed.

Norwegian biotechnology company NorDiag has chosen metro Atlanta for its North American headquarters.

The company will add biotech jobs over the next three years. NorDiag estimates that its Alpharetta facility will create 10-20 high-paying jobs. NorDiag was founded in 2003 and is headquartered in Oslo, Norway. The company develops, manufactures and markets instrumentation and reagents for the clinical and life sciences markets that automate the process of nucleic acid extraction and cell separation from specimens.

“This location is centrally located to our current and potential customers and provides a wealth of resources for us to draw from, including the university systems located in Atlanta and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.  We look forward to our continued growth here,” said Tim Murray, President & General Manager of NorDiag U.S.

NorDiag’s Alpharetta facility is located within the Innovation Crescent, the 13 county region spanning Atlanta to Athens, which is home to 95 percent of the region’s biotechnology resources.

Chris Cummiskey, commissioner of the Georgia Department of Economic Development, highlighted that Georgia’s growing presence in the biotechnology and life sciences arena gets a major boost when global companies like NorDiag choose to locate in the state.

Economic and political worries in Europe and the US fueled another month of wild gyrations in the stock market, but biotech companies continued their strong performance in November.

Burrill & Company, a diversified global financial services firm focused on the life sciences industry, highlighted that the industry witnessed encouraging clinical developments, three drug approvals, two IPOs, and news that Gilead Sciences would buy Pharmasset for $11 billion. Burrill & Company is an investor in Pharmasset.

The firm highlighted that November was a solid month for life sciences venture financings, but less so for life sciences venture capital firms. A total of $690 million in U.S. venture funding occurred during the month, but the sector saw an increasing number of investors exit the life sciences space or announce plans to curtail their activity.

Scale Venture Partners will exit the life sciences and the life science practices at Morgenthaler and Advanced Technology Ventures are breaking off from their IT counterparts to form a new firm. That followed news in October that Prospect Ventures would not raise a fourth healthcare fund and return committed capital to limited partners. A survey from the National Venture Capital Association has found that nearly 40 percent of life sciences venture capitalist firms plan to invest less in the sector during the next three years.

According to Burrill & Company, these developments reflect both frustration with regulatory barriers and the weak market for initial public offerings that have made it difficult for venture investors to cash out of their investments.

It also recommended what needs to be done in order to support biotech jobs.

“These are troubling developments that could constrain the availability of capital to promising young companies in the years ahead,” said G. Steven Burrill, CEO of Burrill & Company.

“It is vital that we address regulatory barriers and capital market constraints that ultimately may be choking off important sources of innovative medicines and new jobs,” Burrill.

Developments:

• Two life sciences companies went public in November. Clovis Oncology completed a $130 million offering. New Link Genetics raised $43 million.
• Three new drugs won U.S. Food and Drug Approval during the month raising the number of new drugs approved by the agency in 2011 to 29, significantly more than the 21 approved during all of 2010.
• Notable developments in the clinic helped spur interest in two companies. Alynlam Pharmaceuticals, in an early-stage study, reported positive results for its experimental RNAi therapy for TTR Amyloidosis, a rare genetic disorder. In other developments, pioneering stem cell company Geron said it is stepping away from its human embryonic stem cell therapeutics program to focus on its mid-stage cancer drugs. The company cited the scarcity of capital and economic uncertainties for its decision.

The Wisconsin Next Generation Jobs Act, a bipartisan special legislative session bill submitted recently at the request of Governor Scott Walker, is expected to result in biotech jobs.

The initiative would provide investment capital and other types of funding to bioscience companies operating within the state.

If signed into law, the bill would take effect in 2012, and allocate 95% of payroll taxes from new biotech industry jobs into the Next Generation Jobs Reserve fund.

“The most important return on investment from this initiative would be the creation of additional high-skill, high-wage jobs and an opportunity to retain the best and brightest students from Wisconsin’s world-class universities,” said Bryan Renk, Executive Director of BioForward, a trade organisation representing Wisconsin’s bioscience industry.

The self-funding programme will be capped at $50 million annually and $500 million over the 15-year life of the programme. An independent group of 12 biotech business leaders and the State of Wisconsin Investment Board would oversee the provision of loans, grants and direct investments to qualifying businesses. Returns on the investment and repayment of loans would be reinvested into the same fund. This legislation compliments existing and successful early-stage funding sources including venture capital, angel investments, SBIR/STTR funding and bank loans. Any bioscience company certified to apply for a grant, loan or investment from the Reserve must provide matching funds from another equity source.

Pete Pellerito, Interim Vice President of State Government Relations and Alliance Development at BIO, said, “If enacted into law, this program would nurture innovative companies that seek to develop cures and breakthrough medicines, improve crop yields, discover cleaner forms of home-grown energy, and provide protection from pandemic and bio-terror threats.”

The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to decide whether Pharmaceutical Sales Rep are entitled to overtime pay.

As per the information available, the Court will review a federal appeals court ruling that held the sales reps do not qualify for overtime under federal labour law. Other appeals courts have ruled differently and the pharmaceutical industry joined in the call for Supreme Court review. The case was brought by two former sales reps for GlaxoSmithKline PLC, Michael Shane Christopher and Frank Buchanan, who are seeking premium overtime pay on behalf of a nationwide class of U.S. sales representatives employed by the London-based drug company.

The cert petition was filed on behalf of two former drug reps for GlaxoSmithKline who claim in a class action lawsuit that they worked an extra 10 to 20 hours a week, but they received no extra pay, according to the Associated Press.

“A Pharmaceutical Sales Rep role is to promote pharmaceuticals to physicians in an effort to influence their prescribing habits,” the cert petition says. “In furtherance of this goal, PSRs visit physicians’ offices, seek out opportunities to promote the employer’s products by discussing the products with physicians, provide samples of the products to physicians, and sometimes ask physicians for non-binding ‘commitments’ to prescribe the products where medically appropriate.”

Medtronic’s medical device sales has increased as the company shared its financial results for its second quarter of fiscal year 2012. The company says it has managed to deliver another quarter of consistent growth in a difficult environment.

The company reported worldwide second quarter revenue of $4.132 billion, compared to the $3.903 billion reported in the second quarter of fiscal year 2011, an increase of 6 percent. International revenue of $1.832 billion increased 14 percent as reported.

“A majority of our businesses, and nearly all of our geographies, contributed to this growth,” said Omar Ishrak, Medtronic chairman and chief executive officer.

The Cardiac and Vascular Group at Medtronic, which consists of Cardiac Rhythm Disease Management (CRDM), CardioVascular, and Physio-Control, had worldwide sales in the quarter of $2.207 billion, representing an increase of 5 percent as reported.

Highlights:

• Cardiac and Vascular Group International sales of $1.213 billion increased 12 percent as reported.
• CRDM second quarter revenue of $1.268 billion increased 2 percent as reported .
• CardioVascular revenue of $830 million grew 12 percent as reported.
• Physio-Control revenue of $109 million was flat as reported.

For the second half of fiscal year 2012, the company expects revenue growth from continuing operations to remain in the range of 1 to 3 percent on a constant currency basis.

“We’ve aligned our organisation to drive market leading execution and we continue to focus on extending our mission globally to expand growth,” said Ishrak.

Immunodiagnostic Systems’ (IDS) medical equipment sales increased as the company shared its interim results for the six month period to 30 September 2011.

The company, a producer of diagnostic testing kits and automated systems for the clinical and research markets, has shared that its revenue increased by 21% to £27.3m (2010: £22.6m).

IDS operates in the in-vitro diagnostics (IVD) market. The company designs, manufactures and sells immunoassay kits as well as its automated analyser, the IDS-iSYS System. The IDS product range is used to measure or detect particular substances within a sample, thus aiding the diagnosis or monitoring of a disease or providing information for research studies.

Tony Martin, Chairman of IDS, mentioned that the first six months has seen IDS continue to grow driven by further demand for IDS-iSYS. The majority of the sales growth is a direct result of both the increase in placements of IDS-iSYS Systems and the growth in revenue per system. The company shared that many of its larger customer accounts have migrated away from manual vitamin D testing and onto the IDS-iSYS.

The impending introduction of competing automated products has coincided with efforts to contain health budgets, particularly in the US, said Martin.

“As a result we are beginning to see increasing price pressure, particularly on our larger accounts, and some very recent disruption to equipment ordering patterns which we believe will persist in the short term. Despite these short term pressures the overall prospects for the Group are good. The recurring nature of our revenues will allow us to progress our plans to grow both organically and by acquisition where this is consistent with the Group’s stated product strategy,” shared Martin.

During the last six months the group has seen a positive increase in its sales, gross profit, and profit before tax as well as moving to a net cash position of £3.3m.

Sales of the company’s automated and non-automated vitamin D products both continue to grow with revenues for the first half of 2011 up 26% to £18.9m compared to same period last year. Importantly, sales through its direct sales operations increased over 30% compared to the same period last year.

Since its launch in 2009, revenues from IDS-iSYS have continued to grow and were £8.3m for the period, representing 30% of total sales, compared to £3.3m (14% of total sales) for the six months to September 2010.