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Archive for April, 2011

Obesity: The Challenge and The Opportunity for The Food Industry

Posted by: Bob Jones on April 25, 2011 | 8 Comments »
Related to: Healthcare Trends

While teaching a class at MIT last week on “Hiring and Firing,” I got a question that made me think about a huge challenge facing those of us who care about health and wellness.
The question was, “Do you think people can change their character?”
I offered this answer: “Yes – if they really, REALLY want to.”

This will probably strike you as odd, but the discussion got me to thinking: what’s the biggest health threat facing our country today? I’ll argue that it’s obesity. As a nation:

  • We are hugely overweight
  • The incidence of obesity-related chronic diseases is through the roof
  • Our health care system is crumpling under the skyrocketing costs of treating all of us overweight, sick people

And what’s causing that?

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Aflibercept Clinical Trial Failure: Lessons to Be Learned

Posted by: Jonathan Pan on April 18, 2011 | 3 Comments »
Related to: Therapeutics

Another week, another phase 3 clinical trial failure. This time it was sanofi-aventis’ turn to receive the bad news for Aflibercept, which failed to show an overall survival benefit in non-small cell lung cancer patients (NSCLC) [trial Information]. But this should not have come as too much of a surprise. The signs were out there in other therapeutic areas that a molecule like Aflibercept would have difficulty in reaching the NDA stage.

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Medtech Companies, Are You Ready to Play the Non-BRIC Emerging Economies?

Posted by: Arshad Ahmed on April 11, 2011 | 1 Comment »
Related to: Medical Devices

Early last week I moderated a panel on medical technology devices in emerging markets organized by the MIT Enterprise Forum. The panel featured Bill Rodriguez, CEO of Daktari Diagnostics and Una Ryan, CEO of Diagnostics for All.

The panel was enlightening, and confirmed our view that emerging and developing markets are ready for significant growth across a wide array of medtech markets. While there has been a lot of attention and focus on China, India and other BRIC economies, we continue to believe that other lesser developed markets, particularly in Africa, present profitable opportunities that have hitherto been neglected by medtech incumbents. However, a new breed of companies is increasingly addressing the compelling medical needs of these emerging economies. Daktari Diagnostics and Diagnostics for All are prime examples of such new players.

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