The Evolution of Pharma R&D Models: Watch Webinar Now

While research and development (R&D) in the pharma sector has traditionally been largely constrained to in-house activity, companies are now much more open to the idea of outsourcing their innovation to remain competitive amid spiralling costs of drug development.

This was just one of the messages that came out of a recent CPHI Webinar ‘The Evolution of Pharma R&D Models’.

“Pharmaceutical companies are now really thinking about using that external innovation landscape as a way to supplement their internal pipeline, particularly in the context of novel modalities, data and cutting-edge analytics,” Rachel Moss, Partner at McKinsey told the audience.

Providing a licensing and M&A perspective, Adrian Dawkes, Managing Director, PharmaVentures said that in 2017, only 23% of products marketed by Pfizer were discovered in-house.

“With internal assets, the pharma company is taking all the risks, while with external assets they get to survey the market and take bets on those that they think are more likely to succeed or those that can be de-risked by the partner company in advance of taking them over,” he said.

Bart DeCorte, VP of Business Development, Symeres said that whatever partnership model a pharma company wished to adopt when choosing a contract research organisation (CRO), it needed to consider questions such as who drives what aspects of the science.

“Whatever model you choose, please reflect upfront who you want to drive and what aspects of the science; are you as a client going to take all the responsibility or are you looking for a CRO who can work much more independently?” he said.

Watch the full webinar here.