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The retrofitted library is the first phase of CommuniTech Research Park, a three-phase effort, in conjunction with the university's Division of Research and Innovation, to drive economic development to the University District. A collection of nonprofits, for-profits, startups and scale-ups have signed on to become the first tenants, or citizens as they are called, of CommuniTech. Everybody is committed to the same idea – hire U of M students, work with faculty researchers to build innovations coming out of the university and make Memphis a national center of technology innovation.
HHS Secretary Alex Azar said Tuesday that the Trump administration's proposal to tie prices for certain Medicare drugs to the prices wealthy countries pay overseas has already changed the dynamic around pharmaceutical prices "perhaps forever." The secretary gave a full-throated defense of the administration's drug pricing blueprint released last May and singled out a controversial proposal to tie the price of physician-administered drugs under Medicare Part B to the average price that wealthy countries like Germany or Japan pay.
Eleven of the 24 companies that won matching grants in 2017 and 2018 are in the healthcare or biomedical spaces. The balance range from education technology to energy storage and materials development and beyond. The State's matches totaled right at $3MM, with awardees garnering a total of nearly $15MM in Federal challenge grants.
The main theme of all emerging trends for 2019 is the continuing need for greater cross-industry collaboration to realize the potential in these areas, according to the report. “The life sciences industry is at a real crossroads: heightened global competition, tougher regulatory standards, and continued cost pressures make efficient innovation in R&D more imperative than ever,” said Christopher McKenna, global head of life sciences professional services & consulting at Clarivate Analytics and co-author of the report.
For months, it had been clear that 2018 would be a banner year for pharmaceutical innovation. The question was, by how much would it shatter the previous (1996) record of 50 approvals (excluding diagnostics and imaging agents)? We now know. It exceeded it by over 20 percent.
