Big pharma collaborate to speed up drug development

Ten of the world's leading biopharmaceutical companies have formed a non-profit organisation with a view to accelerating the development of new medicines.

TransCelerate BioPharma has been launched by Abbott, AstraZeneca, Boehringer Ingelheim, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Eli Lilly and Company, GlaxoSmithKline, Johnson & Johnson, Pfizer, Genentech - a member of the Roche Group - and Sanofi, and is the largest ever initiative of its kind.

The goal is to solve common drug development challenges and ultimately to improve the quality of clinical studies and bring new medicines to market more quickly.

Each of the founding companies will provide financial and other resources, including personnel, and TransCelerate - which has its headquarters in Philadelphia - will initially focus on clinical study execution.

The newly appointed chief executive officer of TransCelerate is Dr Garry Neil, formerly of Johnson & Johnson.

Dr Neil said: "There is widespread alignment among the heads of R&D at major pharmaceutical companies that there is a critical need to substantially increase the number of innovative new medicines, while eliminating inefficiencies that drive up R&D costs."

He added that the new initiative will share research and solutions "that will simplify and accelerate the delivery of exciting new medicines for patients".