A Critical Look at Innovation Profile and Its Relationship with Pharmaceutical Industry

Background: The pharmaceutical sector undertakes extensive research and development (R&D). Pharmaceutical industries have continued to launch an appreciable number of new medicines, different pharmaceutical formulations, new indications and other innovations that contribute to the growth of this sector. New novel medicines are increasingly essential for continued success given the number of standard medicines now available as low cost generics or biosimilars. Consequently, innovation is a fundamental element in pharmaceutical company competition. Not all innovations though are the same size, type or category with differentiation of innovation essential for commercial success. However, given the wide range of definitions used in the literature, the framing may diffuse. Currently, there are several types and categories of innovation are deficiently harmonized and poorly stratified resulting in analysis trends and provide major obstacles to innovation’s differentiation and in assessing the company's innovative dominant characteristic in the sector. The objective of this study is to stratify and organize, didactically, the field of definitions and concepts of innovation and provide a structural and operational delineation, from a critical point of view, for the classifications of innovation applied to the pharmaceutical industr

An overview of the recent developments on fructooligosaccharide production and applications

Over the past years, many researchers have suggested that deficiencies in the diet can lead to disease states and that some diseases can be avoided through an adequate intake of relevant dietary components. Recently, a great interest in dietary modulation of the human gut has been registered. Prebiotics, such as fructooligosaccharides (FOS), play a key role in the improvement of gut microbiota balance and in individual health. FOS are generally used as components of functional foods, are generally regarded as safe (generally recognized as safe status—from the Food and Drug Administration, USA), and worth about 150€ per kilogram. Due to their nutrition- and health-relevant properties, such as moderate sweetness, low carcinogenicity, low calorimetric value, and low glycemic index, FOS have been increasingly used by the food industry. Conventionally, FOS are produced through a two-stage process that requires an enzyme production and purification step in order to proceed with the chemical reaction itself. Several studies have been conducted on the production of FOS, aiming its optimization toward the development of more efficient production processes and their potential as food ingredients. The improvement of FOS yield and productivity can be achieved by the use of different fermentative methods and different microbial sources of FOS producing enzymes and the optimization of nutritional and culture parameter; therefore, this review focuses on the latest progresses in FOS research such as its production, functional properties, and market data.Agencia de Inovacao (AdI)-Project BIOLIFE reference PRIME 03/347. Ana Dominguez acknowledges Fundacao para a Ciencia e a Tecnologia, Portugal, for her PhD grant reference SFRH/BD/23083/2005

A new parameterization of volcanic ash complex refractive index based on NBO/T and SiO2 content

Radiative transfer models used in remote sensing and hazard assessment of volcanic ash require knowledge of ash optical parameters. Here, we characterise the bulk and glass compositions of a representative suite of volcanic ash samples with known complex refractive indices (n + ik: where n is the real and k is the imaginary part). Using a linear regression model, we develop a new parameterization allowing the complex refractive index of volcanic ash to be estimated from ash SiO2 content or ratio of non-bridging oxygens to tetrahedrally-coordinated cations (NBO/T). At visible wavelengths, n correlates better with bulk than glass composition (both SiO2 and NBO/T), and k correlates better with SiO2 content than NBO/T. Over a broader spectral range (0.4–19 μm), bulk correlates better than glass composition, and NBO/T generally correlates better than SiO2 content for both parts of the refractive index. In order to understand the impacts of our new parameterization on satellite retrievals, we compared IASI satellite (wavelengths 3.62–15.5 μm) mass loading retrievals using our new approach with retrievals that assumed a generic (Eyjafjallajökull) ash refractive index. There are significant differences in mass loading using our calculated indices specific to ash type rather than a generic index. Where mass loadings increase, there is often improvement in retrieval quality (corresponding to cost function decrease). This new parameterization of refractive index variation with ash composition will help to improve remote sensing retrievals for the rapid identification of ash and quantitative analysis of mass loadings from satellite data on operational timescales