Essay about Biopure Case Group1 SecB

The market of human blood transfusions is broken down into different uses: Elective Surgery, Emergency Surgery and Trauma. However, Hemopure seems to be suitable only for trauma cases due to its characteristics and, again, high price. To understand the reason, it is important to notice that, actually, only 10% of the 500,000 trauma victims receives RBCs “in the field” or at the site of accident, and the remaining 95% of these people does not receive transfusions until they arrive at the hospital. This delay was often cited as a major factor to the 20,000 trauma deaths. Therefore, since the expected market share for Biopure is 25% and assuming that the total blood transfusions remain stable, the potential market size for Hemopure is approximately $350,000,000. This size is based on an average price of $700 multiplied by 2,000,000 units (around 4 blood units are needed for each Trauma case).

Bargaining Power of Suppliers: The bargaining power of suppliers in the industry is low. There are numerous suppliers in this industry, and the large department stores have the ability to negotiate for the lowest prices. In addition, the switching costs are low, as the products are not highly differentiated. There are a large volume of purchases in the industry, allowing the department stores to exert even more power over the suppliers.

Step 1: How will you identify the “vital” cellular protein that the virus targets for degradation? (Hint: think proteomics). (3 pts.)

The Oxyglobin and Hemopure substitutes developed by Biopure have an advantage over blood transfusions in many areas including blood type matching, universality in terms of donating, such as O+ blood recipients. The blood substitutes also had a much longer storage life of 2 years as opposed to the 6-week storage life of transfused blood. Furthermore, with the rise of diseases such as AIDS and increasing public concern about the same, blood substitutes also helped mitigate that risk. Baxter International and Northfield Laboratories-products sourced their blood substitutes from human blood whereas, Biopure sourced it from animal blood, cattle in particular. This put them in a better position than their competitors. Also Biopure’s Hemopure and Oxyglobin did not require refrigeration unlike its competitor’s products.

The traditional process for transfusions has been widely acknowledged as a successful part of the medicinal process, but most people are unaware of the shortcomings of blood transfusions. For example, donated blood is only useful for a maximum of forty-two days of shelf-life, even with the use of nutritional additives. (Lowe 1) Although the demand for blood can be high at times, it is unpredictable how much will be needed or of what blood type. This means that a good amount of blood will inevitably have to be discarded without being used. An ideal blood substitute would have a long shelf life, so that it could be used without waste. The most current artificial bloods have a shelf life of about a year, about eight times traditional blood (Sakar). Another downfall of traditional transfusions is the struggle for compatibility and donor safety. Each donor and recipient match must be tested for blood type and by cross matching blood samples. Not enough people donate blood in the first place, and each person must be tested to make sure that they are disease free, or have not done anything risking their blood’s health in the past. Artificial blood would be a perfect match with all blood types and bodies, eliminating the need for the hassle of having to use donors altogether. (Nielson) An alternative to traditional blood would allow certain groups of people with religious restrictions, such as

Biopure Corporation was founded in 1984 by Carl Rausch and David Judelson and quickly became one of three legitimate contenders in the emerging field of blood substitutes. The primary goal of Biopure was to develop a human blood substitute that replicates the oxygen carrying function of blood without the limitations of blood donations. After many years of research and development and over $200 million dollars invested, Biopure had developed two blood substitutes. Hemopure was the human blood substitute and Oxyglobin was created for the animal market. In 1998, Oxyglobin received FDA approval for commercial launch of the product but Hemopure was still 1-2 years away. The approval of Oxyglobin left Biopure the difficult decision on releasing

Based on analysis of market conditions, it is recommended to launch Oxyglobin immediately without any delay. Assuming marketing and advertising costs to be 20% of selling price $200, the break even is 4.5 months (Refer Table 1). Further, with Hemopure 2 years away, it leaves Biopure with 1.5 years of revenue from Oxyglobin that can be used for marketing of Hemopure.

This website was very credible and trustworthy as it contained scientific facts and figures about blood donations. Once again, credibility is very important when evaluating and selecting sources and this webpage was very trustworthy as it was created by a qualified donor record organisation called the American Association of Blood Banks (AABB).

Nucor Corporation: Competing against Low Cost Steel imports deals with leading steel manufacturer Nucor Corporation and trends in the steel industry affecting Nucor. Steel manufacturing is an old business, but is currently facing the fast changes associated with new technologies, the rise of globalization, and changes in cost and efficiency. To date, Nucor has maneuvered business cycles and market challenges to maintain a positive profit margin in every quarter since 1966 (Thompson, 2008). The company’s strategy of decentralized structure, focus on disruptive technology, unique employee engagement

Clinical practice guidelines are one of the foundations of efforts to improve health care (Shekelle, Woolf, Grimshaw, Schüneman, & Eccle, 2012). This case analysis surrounds the question, “Why should management review guidelines each year in order to have the best evidence-based practice for nurses and patients?”. The question created through the past case study essay based on evidence-based practice. Monash University (n.d) describing the practice as making clinical decisions that rely on evidence and clinical experience with patient expectation. This case analysis will break down the previous work on the case study, supplying critical feedback to help sharpen the question, locating the evidence, the appraisal of the evidence

Theranos is a medical laboratory and health service Company that is based in California. The company was established in 2003 by a young lady by the name Elizabeth Holmes who had the passion of transforming the health care industry to better. The main focus of the company was to decrease the size of small blood sample that is taken out of the patient. The company developed a method where a drop of blood was the maximum size of the blood sample that was used to give many results. This means that the blood sample is a drop of blood that is taken out of figure and the patient is supposed to give out the blood only ones because the drop of blood is used in all the other testing irrespective of their number. On top of that, the company has improved on the efficiency of its operations, it has reduced the cost of blood test dramatically and it has made the blood test process to be faster.

Blood contamination from donors was not screened in centuries before, which did not eliminate any possible infectious disease transmission. For example, HIV and Hepatitis was easily circulated through blood donations because the technology was not born yet. There are several departments in the CDC that function together to sample, screen, and test all blood donors for any diseases. The National Center for HIV / AIDS, Viral Hepatitis, STD, and TB Prevention (NCHHSTP), the Center for Surveillance, Epidemiology and Laboratory Services, American Cross, Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and the American Society of Hematology (ASH) all work together solved the blood contamination through human error problem. According to Menon, M., Graves, L., McCombs, K., Hise, K., Silk, B., Kuehnert, M., & Lynch, M. (2013), “Bacterial contamination of blood components was the second most frequently reposted cause of transfusion-related fatalities reported to the Food and Drug Administration, the most frequent cause of fatality being hemolytic transfusion reactions” (p. 1974). The NCHHSTP along with other agencies are committed to the public health safety in surveillance, prevention research, and programs to control any diseases spread by blood transfusions.

Problem Statement – Biopure (BPC), is a small and private developer of human (Hemopure) and animal (Oxyglobin) blood substitutes. Biopure is faced with the decision of whether to immediately launch Oxyglobin (Og) or wait until after the launch of hemapure (Hp), which will be in about two years following FDA approval. If they decide to launch they must determine their pricing strategy. The concern is that launching Oxyblobin would create an obstacle to the pricing of Hemopure, the company's initial product focus.

First, it is most important to know about the nature and history of the blood exchange market before moving on to an explanation of the blood transfusion market and process. Donating blood is one of the greatest and most altruistic activities that one could participate in. The market involved here has changed

A prospective randomized controlled trial that had 127 participants in their control and intervention groups compared venous, arterial blood management (VAMP) system in relation to transfusion requirement, preserved hemoglobin and hematocrit. The study found that the VAMP was effective in conserving hemoglobin (hgb) and hematocrit (hct) (H & H); however, the study failed to show, the use of VAMP decreased the number of RBC transfused (Rezende et al., 2010). Final results on hct were 26.5g/dl in the control group vs 29.4g/dl in the intervention group with a P value of 0.006; the final results of hgb in both groups were 9.1g/dl in the control group vs 9.7g/dl in the intervention group (P= 0.033), a significant result for their a-priori level value which was set at 5% (Rezende et al., 2010). The number of transfused RBC in 14 days between the groups were as follows: 2.42±1.43 units in the control group vs 2.25units ±1.24 units in the intervention group (P= 0.623) (Rezende et al., 2010). The authors recommended the use of VAMP to conserve H&H; however, they acknowledge that lack of time and limited resources as their limitation in that larger studies are needed for comparison with their failed hypothesis regarding decreased transfusion requirement.