Welcome to the November edition of Pharmafocus!

This edition of Pharmafocus is the ideal reading material, providing interesting insights into the pharmaceutical industry this month. These include Almirall’s returning Immunoskin event, which is being held again in Barcelona for its third successful year (page 4). In more industrial news, Sumagen has had its HIV vaccine candidate optimised for industrial production (page 5).

This month's industry insight reveals how R&D at Vertex is helping to develop transformative medicines for those living with serious diseases (page 8).

Some clinical trial updates from the past four weeks include the successful recruitment by Aravax for the phase 2trial of atreatment for peanut allergies (page 10). There is promising news for those who suffer from Fabry disease as results from aphase 3trial by SOBI and Apellis Pharmaceuticals show potential for treating rare kidney diseases (page 11). In the approvals section, anew breast cancer drug from Novartis receives Committee for Medicinal Products for Human Use (CHMP) approval (page 12), in addition to adrug for hereditary transthyretin-mediated amyloidosis from AstraZeneca (page 13). Meanwhile, global developments continue to advance in China with an updated state-of-the-art biotech facility by Biosynth opening its doors (page 14). More new ventures include the acquisition of Phenocell by Axol Bioscience, which will expand cell models at the latter to include two new specialisms (page 15), and anew CDMO, OneSource, being launched at CPHI earlier this year (page 15).

Enjoy this edition of Pharmafocus, which includes five facts about the impact of artificial intelligence (page 18) as the pharmaceutical industry becomes more dependent on the use of this rapidly evolving technology.

Natalia Elliot