Today, URL Pharma was acquired by Takeda for nearly $800M.  The story here in brief is that for hundreds of years, colchicine was used for the treatment of gout and other conditions; it was an effective drug but had to be used carefully. URL invested in the formulation development and clinical studies required for colchicine, and ultimately received FDA approval in 2009. 

Senator Barack Obama's drug price and access control proposals will distort future investment decisions and smother the financial incentives that inspire innovation.

If you want cutting-edge health care, don't make it a cost-controlled commodity.

The crisis in financing is having a chilling effect on biomedical innovation. As discussed in my last column, the main problem in our industry is that the sheer cost of drug development has become almost prohibitively expensive, effectively pricing almost everyone but the largest companies out of the market.

Reviewing "The Myth of The Paperless Office" for the New Yorker in 2002, Malcolm Gladwell argued that if the computer had come first, and paper didn't exist, someone would have had to invent it.  Paper, it turns out, is a lot more useful than we typically appreciate.

Successfully translating scientific discoveries requires a sense of urgency, which some disease foundations seem to have, and many big pharmas appear to need. Patients waiting expectantly for medical research to produce important new cures are finding bad news almost everywhere they turn.

Perhaps it's the sweet California air, but the pervasive (though not universal) pessimism in biopharma these days is really bumming me out.  Consequently, I'd like to discuss three potential responses to difficult industry problems.

How do we continue to pay for new drugs and and more innovative treatments, especially when this additional progress also comes with an additional economic cost?