The easy double-digit growth rate is something of the past for Big Pharma and many companies has been forced to cut sales staff, streamline the pipeline and look beyond own boundaries for in-licensing opportunities with blockbuster potential or company acquisitions with a strategic fit[1]. All this to accommodate the threat from generic manufactures when blockbuster drugs are losing patent protection[2]. To paint up an even gloomier picture; FDA did only approve 16 new drugs last year (2007), and is on the pace to approve just 18 this year. The approval rate in 1997 was 39 drugs, and the staggering decrease from 39 approvals to 16 approvals in 2007 is making the future for Pharma pretty bleak.
Big Pharma is always on the look-out for the next blockbuster product and the search is not only focusing on late-stage, but also early-stage candidate. This has created the trend I call: “the new old partnering trend”.
The Old Trend: Big Pharma-academic partnership engaged university researchers for a certain line of research that benefited their projects, and that research was carried out exclusively by the university scientist.
The New Old Trend: The new involvement tend to be more of a team based approach, where university and industry scientists are working together on wide-ranging experiments to advance new drug discovery and stimulate basic research – in hope of more potential blockbusters in the future.
Examples of this New Old Trend are[3]:
GSK entered into a five-year, US$25 million deal with Harvard to support stem-cell research, focusing on heart disease and cancer.
AstraZeneca signed a multi-year collaboration contract with Columbia University to develop novel therapeutics for metabolic diseases.
Pfizer formed a three-year, US$14 million collaboration with four research universities to study the field of diabetes.
To sum it up: Pharma needs to approach the R&D process from another perspective, and one way could be to collaborate with academic institutions, instead of only using them for a certain line of research. But if The New Old Trend should have a reel impact the academic institutions and Big Pharma needs to break down the barriers and start look at the positive benefits of working together – the three mentioned cases could indicate willingness from both sides.
[1] UCB recently refocused and cut workforce by 17%.
[2] The world best selling drug Lipitor (Pfizer) will lose patent protection in all territories over the next 3-4 years. Risperdal (J&J) the 10th best selling drug lost patent protection in EU in 2007.
[3] From:”Big pharma gravitates to the academe”, Financial Times.
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