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The March DCAT meeting was a hotbed of discussion on subjects including trends in R&D and prescription drug use, the quality of scientific publications, and blurring of the lines between innovators and generics.

Earlier this month, the Drug, Chemical and Associated Technologies Association hosted DCAT Week at New York City's famous Waldorf Astoria hotel. The DCAT Association is over 100 years old, with membership drawn from big pharma, generics companies, active ingredient manufacturers and more. DCAT week brought together over 2000 professionals primarily involved with business development, sourcing, procurement, and supply chain management.

For the first time at DCAT, Thomson representatives were pleased to host an educational program (although representatives of the API Intelligence group — formerly Newport Strategies — have attended and occasionally presented at this event for many years). When Thomson Scientific was invited to host the program, we worked closely with the organizers to develop an agenda that would be of interest to DCAT members and could highlight content from across Thomson: not just Thomson Scientific but also Thomson Financial and Thomson Healthcare.

Thomson representatives were pleased to lead a series of three interactive sessions for about 120 people, focused on:

1) Key industry trends

• R&D trends and influencers
  Lawrence Liberti, VP and General Manager, Thomson Pharmaceutical Services presented an overview of R&D trends including unique insight from CMR International on global pharmaceutical sales, pipeline growth, R&D expenditure and NME launches. He also looked at the quality of scientific publications, using the Thomson Message Mapping System to measure the strength of pharma-sponsored articles compared to those from non-pharma sources.
  
  
• Phenotypic screening
  Insight from Prous Science contributed to discussions on whether traditional methods of phenotypic screening were more successful than mechanistically oriented drug discovery methods in getting drugs to market. The questions addressed included: 
• What are the trends in phenotypical screening versus mechanism based screening?
• Are there differences by therapeutic area? 
• Are there differences in survival by clinical phase?
• Are there differences in chemical attributes?
  
  
• Regulatory intelligence
  Using information from IDRAC's global regulatory intelligence database, this session also looked at regulatory influencers, particularly the Food and Drug Administration Amendments Act of 2007 and major expected changes in the European Union.
  
  
• Trends in prescription drug use
  Bill Marder, Senior Vice President and General Manager, Thomson Healthcare, presented Medstat data on key Prescription (Rx), physician (MD) and hospital spending projections, taking a deeper dive into key therapy areas including high cholesterol, cancer and acute myocardial infarction.
  DCAT TV interview with Bill Marder
  
  
• Healthcare stock performance
  Jeff Shacket, Vice President, Corporate Advisory Services, Thomson Financial and Foli Adadevoh, Director, Corporate Advisory Services, Thomson Financial discussed the financial implications for heathcare companies of the volatility facing the US markets. Key discussion points included where are the investment dollars moving to, and who is the financial favorite: niche, biotech, big pharma?
  DCAT TV interview with Jeff Shacket
  
  
• Trends in generics and API
  David Harding, Sales Support Specialist, API Intelligence, Thomson Scientific delivered insights on Generic and API trends: ANDA Trends, Trends in Paragraph IV filings, Availability of High-Quality API, and Trends in Regulatory Filings and FDA Inspections.
  DCAT TV interview with Kate Kuhrt and David Harding
  

2) Innovators and Generics: Are the lines blurring?
Mike Chace-Ortiz, Director, Product Strategy and API Intelligence, Thomson Scientific, presented a lively and occasionally controversial review of what is driving generics toward innovation, and innovators toward generics. He discussed critical success factors, strategies, and wondered aloud what the future may bring.
DCAT TV interview with Mike Chace-Ortiz

3) Emerging markets as opportunities rather than threats
Kate Kuhrt, Director, Generics and API Intelligence, Thomson Scientific guided the audience through the pros and cons of doing business in the key emerging markets of Brazil, Russia, India and China. The discussion looked at markets for APIs and dose, and at country-specific R&D and manufacturing bases. Key focal points included business opportunities in these regions, and whether any should be regarded as threats.
DCAT TV interview with Kate Kuhrt and David Harding

Look out for future white papers from Thomson Scientific on some of these hot topics — subscribing to KnowledgeLink will ensure you are alerted when these are available.

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