Digital Transformation

Deal Snapshot: The Danish drug maker plans to pay up to $2.7bn to Flagship Pioneering-incubated Valo Health for its AI-enabled small molecule discovery and human genetic data platform.

BenevolentAI has added Merck KGaA to its list of partners but the UK firm is looking for a new CEO after Joanna Shields decided to leave as a major restructuring continues.

A new digital health venture set up by Eisai plans to start operations in Japan from April 2024 with services related to cognitive impairment and dementia, in line with the Japanese firm's therapeutic advances in this area.

First Wave is licensing Sanofi’s 5-HT4 receptor partial agonist capeserod and is having to pay a mere $500,000 in upfront fees for the privilege.

The biotech company already has a candidate with a tough target in the clinic for COVID-19 and plans to have four to six candidates in the clinic over the next two years following a $273m series C round.

Deal Snapshot: Two years into a three-year partnership with Lilly, Verge announced another deal, with AstraZeneca’s Alexion, just months after acquiring bragging rights with early clinical data for an AI-discovered product candidate.

Dr Reddy's Laboratories' co-chairman and MD, GV Prasad, talks about his conversations with late founder Dr Anji Reddy, the company’s ‘Horizon 2’ strategy, pricing expectations for CAR-T cell therapies, the promise of the China market, how Indian owner-managed pharma firms are figuring out ways to deal with succession aspects and his new book.

In this week's podcast edition of Five Must-Know Things: Wegovy’s solid new trial results; Lilly’s sales swing back; nothing off the table for new Bayer boss; new compliance crackdown in China; and McKinsey on AI.

Cipla’s chief Dr Yusuf Hamied talks about investments in new technologies that will shape the company’s future, terming reports of a stake sale as “speculative" but not going as far as an outright denial.

McKinsey & Company's senior partner Vikas Bhadoria, in this first instalment of a wide-ranging two-part interview with Scrip, outlines a number of use cases to define where pharma currently is and the potential value that can be unlocked as industry adopts new technologies such as generative AI, digital twins and the metaverse.

Senior executives from Dr Reddy’s and Cipla showcase the “step-change” in performance across cost, quality and delivery metrics at their ‘lighthouse’ manufacturing sites in India as industry tackles dwindling operating margins and evolving compliance requirements. 

Physician-turned-pharma executive, Iris Zemzoum, leads Novartis in the Asia Pacific, Middle East and Africa (APMA) region. She tells Scrip how the Swiss group is empowering patients to help shape the future of healthcare and also partnering across the diverse region to leverage real-world evidence.

In this week's podcast edition of Five Must-Know Things: Merck & Co takes IRA legal action; notes from BIO Day 1; stories from ASCO around ImmunoGen’s ovarian cancer candidate and Servier’s progress in glioma; and the future of AI in pharma.

As generative AI and its star avatar, ChatGPT, take the world by storm, pharma is seeing traction for use cases around smarter pharmacovigilance and commercial marketing content development, among others. Senior executives from Indegene discuss this and more in an interview with Scrip.

Dr Reddy’s is collaborating with innovator firms in China, Israel and the US largely in areas of unmet need, propelling its “Horizon-2” strategy that encompasses segments like biologics and cell and gene therapy, digital services and immuno-oncology NCEs, among others.

The UK firm, which uses artificial intelligence to discover and develop drugs, is hoping to save £45m by halving its workforce and trimming its pipeline.