Pharma to make the private public

Last week Pharmaceutical leaders from AstraZeneca, GlaxoSmithKline, Pfizer and Roche met in Vienna in a closed meeting to discuss Pharmaceutical Futures. Pharmaceutical companies are once again dominating the news with fears of lay-offs and job cuts, but is there a more agreeable solution to save money?

The attendees at the Next Generation Pharmaceutical summit (hosted by GDS International) were among those leading the rumours of cuts within the Drug Discovery Arena, but this was not there focus and felt that despite obvious fears the only way was to look towards the future.

Having spoken with Ted Torphy Vice President & Lead, External Innovation of Johnson & Johnson he made it clear that as a pharmaceutical company they were to lend a little more rope to solutions providers and to have faith in their abilities. He discussed the idea of setting up ‘temporary partnerships' to combat an innovation deficit felt within pharma recently. Productivity within the labs has been seen to be plummeting as it begins to switch its attention to diseases that are relatively common to those that are more complex or unusual.

"The innovation deficit has enormous implications for the industry as a whole. Many pharmaceutical companies need to look at what they want to be doing and where they should be concentrating. They must identify the core competencies the activity will require. The pharmaceutical companies that regard R&D as a core element of their business will have to make fundamental alterations in the way they work."

One suggestion made is that the industry should become more innovative and look to reducing its R&D costs. Private companies who conventionally undertake pharmaceutical research will traditionally take stringent measures to protect their research results as private intellectual property (IP) until they have achieved a marketable compound. A by-product of this is an inability to share their research results with each other even within a single company. Pharmaceutical researchers tend to be consumers rather than suppliers. Consequently commercial competitors are blocked from access to important discoveries as well as an effective research history. So the consensus at the NGP EU summit was to fill the ‘IP Shadow' and the recently experienced innovation deficit.

Ted Torphy was joined in his views by AstraZeneca - Les Hughes, VP Drug Discovery for Oncology & Infection, GlaxoSmithKline Centre of Excellence for External Drug Discovery (ceedd) - Andrew Parsons, VP and Head of Preclinical Development calling for a open collaboration that embraces temporary partnerships and sharing intelligent property.

Companies themselves are expected to change shape, in the future the industry will look vastly different from the current model of huge companies carrying out a range of functions - research, development, marketing, sales, and manufacturing - across the globe. While big companies will still exist, they will need to pursue different business models and try new methods to achieve the right balance.

Related articles:

The future of GSK | Job cuts for GlaxoSmithKline | GSK, Astellas and Novartis warned over drug promotions | GSK begins swine flu trials

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