一年半前，Jean-jacques Garyaud在瑞士罗氏举行的罗氏举行的药物研究和早期药物开发中，在巴黎的地方助剂附近的晚宴上撞到一位老朋友 - 肾脏专家GérardFriedlander, who’d been a fellow intern at Claude Bernard Hospital in the French capital back in the late 1970s. At the time of the dinner, Friedlander was doing innovative research at the Paris-based Necker School of Medicine into the way calcium and phosphate are transported by the urinary system, and Roche was seeking outside experts to work with its in-house scientists.
“我说我们应该一起谈谈，”召回专门从事内科和传染病的Garaud。和voilá！弗里德兰德 - 虽然仍然在颈圈 - 现在正在与罗氏进行合作研究肾病的生物学。
“I don’t want to give the impression that the only way we are managing our science is by having dinner with friends,” Garaud is quick to point out. Still, Roche researchers and executives are trawling the web, professional meetings, university journals and their own Rolodexes in search of cutting-edge academic experts who can bolster the $52 billion manufacturer’s labs and help it develop drugs for cancer, neurologic diseases, inflammatory disease and other ailments. For instance, another bit of networking by Garaud — based on a decadelong professional friendship with Jean-Claude Tardif, director of the Montreal Heart Institute’s research center — led to a program for joint research into coronary disease at the Canadian institute about three years ago. That undertaking has since burgeoned into several projects, one of which is in late-stage clinical trials. And Roche is working with scientists at Baylor Institute for Immunology Research in Dallas on autoimmune diseases and immune response to chronic viral infections.
Garaud is right, of course, that all this outreach isn’t just a matter of dinner parties. Nor are Roche and other big drug companies merely collecting some nice extra tidbits of research to fill in temporarily for their own underperforming labs. These examples are the first signs of a major shake-up of what was once a powerful industry of vertically integrated giants.
“这不是该行业的生产力危机，”塔夫茨大学的药物开发中心主任Kenneth Kaitin说。“这是一个商业模式危机。”
到目前为止，药业的问题都太众所周知。随着他们的研究实验室摇摇欲坠，主要的制药公司 - 被称为大制药公司 - 已经尝试互相合并，购买生物技术，等待新的基因组学科学生产奇迹。没有那种工作，所以像Garaud这样的高管正在努力努力。也许科学过于复杂，研究过于昂贵，试验太复杂，客户群太漫射了一个公司，无论多大，都是由自己做的。
Thus the pharmaceuticals makers are experimenting with a variety of new business models, almost the same way they experiment with molecules, hoping to find a blockbuster that will save their bottom line. Increasingly, they are turning to outsiders to take on all sorts of tasks, even ones that have traditionally been seen as essential, ranging from early-stage research to animal trials, human trials, data analysis, regulatory submissions and marketing. They are collaborating with universities, and with other companies, to a degree and depth never done before. At the same time, some companies are expanding beyond prescription drugs into more-lowbrow areas such as animal health and over-the-counter potions.
“如果你看看是新产品的引入的最终名，而且在过去的15年里，生产力降低，”Garaud说。“矛盾地，我们正在发生在我们目睹生命科学和技术中最奇妙的革命的时候发生。”Garaud说，地上，他和他的同事必须在选择目标并分享风险时更好地做得更好。
“For the last 20 years, [Big Pharma] built huge infrastructures and had huge wins on the short term,” adds Ian Wilcox, head of life sciences at Hay Group, a Philadelphia-based consulting firm. “Now that business model requires an investor risk that is becoming untenable.” But the rejiggering raises some troubling questions about the very definitions of pharmaceutics and drug companies. Now that they are shedding so many drug tasks and taking on so much nondrug work, it seems inappropriate to call them drug companies. It’s not even clear if they share a core competency. “A lot of large companies are looking at themselves as holistic health care companies,” says Terri Cooper, a principal at Deloitte Consulting in New York.
当大片药物失去独家营销权利时，困境的一连串突显开始，允许更便宜的通用版本来泛滥药店。Pfizer’s Lipitor, the top-selling drug on the planet, will hit that dreaded milestone in November, and 2012 will usher in a record $44.6 billion in expirations, according to New York–based drug research firm Mehta Partners, including those of Pfizer’s Viagra, AstraZeneca’s Seroquel for schizophrenia, Bristol-Myers Squibb Co.’s anticlotting superstar Plavix and Merck & Co.’s asthma and allergy medication Singulair. The good news is that the hemorrhaging dries up after next year. From 2013 through 2015, Mehta forecasts only $13 billion to $24 billion in patent losses annually.
One question mark is how quickly generics makers will be able to jump in with equivalent biologic drugs, or drugs made from living cells. The science for making such drugs is much more complex and delicate than for copying traditional chemical-based drugs, because living material like cells can be affected by even small changes in factory conditions. Last year’s health care reform included rules that were supposed to speed up the legal and regulatory pathway for these generics by setting a time limit on brand-name biologics’ patent exclusivity. However, lobbyists and lawmakers are now debating how to define “exclusivity.” And the science hasn’t gotten any easier.
无论如何，专利截止日期本身并不一定是灾难性的。”专利过期是生活中正常的一部分，”迈克尔·克伦萨瓦奇指出，他经营着总部位于纽约的克伦萨瓦奇资产管理公司，这是一家专门从事医药行业的对冲基金公司(他不会透露公司的资产规模。）“问题是如果你没有药物来替代它们。”
事实上，这是一个问题。美国公司经常花费19至20％的国内年销售额 - 去年共有674亿美元 - 试图根据美国制药研究和制造商的美国或Phrma，该行业的贸易集团生产这些替代品。然而，这笔钱购买了越来越少。TUFTS现在暂停了120亿美元的新药物的平均成本，超过了十年前的8亿美元。在同一十年中，联邦食品和药物管理局的药物评估和研究中心（CDER）提交了30个创新新药申请的年度平均水平，无处可行，1996年达到的45位。
“Productivity has gone down 9 to 11 percent per year for years,” says Peter Tollman, a senior partner in Boston Consulting Group’s health care practice.
The main explanation for that slowdown is that the easy discoveries — understanding the most clear-cut disease processes, like high blood pressure — were achieved long ago. As Roche’s Garaud puts it, “We are getting into territories that are more uncharted.”
人类基因组的作图应该是答案。其基本思想是对为人类发育提供基本遗传指导的30亿对化学单位的确切顺序进行排序或鉴定。从理论上讲，科学家们可以寻找在患有特殊疾病的人身上出现的不寻常的基因变异，然后开发出精确瞄准这些变异的飞镖枪。第一份基因组草案于2000年公布，2003年完成，但研究进展缓慢，未能产生可行的产品。事实证明，大多数疾病的病因比几个明显的基因突变要复杂得多。
A few gene-based matches have been made, most recently GlaxoSmithKline’s and Human Genome Sciences’ Benlysta, a drug for the autoimmune disease lupus that was approved by the FDA in March. Experts expect that autoimmune diseases and some cancers, along with diagnostic tests, will continue to be the main beneficiaries of genomic discoveries in the near term. But there’s a wide range of opinions, from optimism to cynicism, about how quickly this scientific work will turn into actual treatments and how many there will be.
One crucial tool that could speed up this trend is lower-cost sequencing. As more scientist-entrepreneurs compete to sell gene-sequencing machines and personalized genomes for the mass market, the cost of sequencing has already dropped from $2.7 billion for the first genome down to $5,000 per person or even lower, depending on who’s bragging. Tony Butler, senior health care analyst at Barclays Capital, thinks the holy grail of a thousand-dollar genome could be achieved in less than three years; science writer Kevin Davies, in a book published last year and appropriately titled The $1,000 Genome, predicts that achievement this year. Such price discounting is important, Butler points out, because genomics-based medicine “is going to require sequencing a lot more individuals, and we can only do that by lowering the cost.”
一旦他们提出了一个有前途的产品，公司必须获得FDA的批准。由于大多数工业观察者假设，这张照片实际上并不像阴沉。确实，即使是FDA承认其标准近年来越来越苛刻。根据PhRMA的说法，自1999年以来，FDA制裁临床试验所需的程序数量增加了68％，从96到158，典型试验的长度从460天拍摄到780。
大多数观察家认为这是最新的the agency’s historical boom-bust cycle. It goes like this: Patients who’ve been taking drugs already on the market start to suffer serious side effects, there’s a public outcry, Congress demands an investigation into the FDA’s drug-review system, and the FDA gets more cautious about approving applications. After a few years of slow approvals, other patients start asking why they can’t get medications that are available in Europe, Congress holds more hearings, and the FDA speeds up. “The FDA is a reactive, conservative bureaucracy, and they are simply reflecting the concern about drug safety,” says Kris Jenner, who manages T. Rowe Price’s $3 billion Health Sciences Fund mutual fund. The agency has been in “slow” mode since Merck pulled the painkiller Vioxx off the market in September 2004 because of serious risks of heart attacks and stroke. This caution has only been reinforced by a slew of safety problems from other companies’ drugs plus 18 congressional hearings.
However, Janet Woodcock, the director of the FDA’s drug review center, insists that science, not politics, is pushing the bar higher. “We learn new science, and then an [added] evaluation has to be done,” she says. For instance, when patients with multiple conditions are taking chronic drugs, “we need to look more carefully,” she says, to see if common events like heart attacks are more frequent. But Woodcock, a rheumatologist by training, says the agency is also making it easier to get drugs approved, with new policies on early-stage trials that allow varying sets of doses in people and animals.
Over the past ten years, manufacturers havesought new drugs as much in one another’s labs as in their own. Thanks to a rash of mergers, there are now just nine or ten Big Pharma names, depending on how strict the definition is — half as many as there were in 1999. Pfizer, most famously, sucked up Warner-Lambert, then Pharmacia (both of which were the products of earlier nuptials) and then Wyeth. Meanwhile, Hoechst and Rhône-Poulenc became Aventis, which was subsequently bought by Sanofi; Merck took over Schering-Plough Corp.; and Glaxo Wellcome married SmithKline Beecham. Experts say these linkups generally succeed in trimming costs by reducing overlap, closing sites and cutting jobs. Merck expects to save $3.5 billion annually from its 2009 merger with Schering-Plough starting next year, and Pfizer forecasts a savings of $4 billion a year from its 2009 acquisition of ?Wyeth. But the deals rarely boost R&D productivity and can hurt morale.
不管是好是坏，这条逃亡之路即将消失，因为留下来的可供合并的公司寥寥无几。”我认为，考虑到制药企业的规模和反垄断因素，你不会看到前八大或前十大制药企业进行合并，”总部位于纽约的德勤（Deloitte）专门从事并购的合伙人菲利普•普夫朗（Philip Pfrang）预测。这仍然留下了一个多汁的鱼池：中小型生物技术公司的产量一直超过大公司。尽管FDA没有按公司的规模或类型跟踪申请，Woodcock说，“我们看到越来越多的小公司批准的药物，”几乎所有的行业观察家都同意这一点。在过去的六年中，生物技术公司的收购从2009年罗氏以468亿美元收购基因泰克，到2005年先灵葆雅以1800万美元收购了马萨诸塞州一家专门从事抗病毒药物的生物技术公司？？新生制药公司。
但甚至吞噬生物技术也不够了。科学已经如此复杂，需要象牙塔中最先进的思想。并且成本如此之高，需要更多的钱包。这就是新商业模式开始踢的地方。
最普遍的趋势涉及提高外部科学家的角色，特别是来自学术界的角色。传统上，大学，独立研究实验室和国家卫生研究院的最早阶段工作是理解基本生物过程，例如蛋白质的结构。然而，现在，大医药正在依靠他们在下一阶段合作，称为翻译科学，它利用基本研究寻求有效针对特定疾病目标的分子。这甚至可以包括人类试验。
一些公司通过资助大学的下一阶段研究来做到这一点，比如罗氏与内克尔学院、贝勒和蒙特利尔心脏研究所的合作。加劳德说，罗氏现在在全球大约十几家机构都有项目，通常在每个地点都有几个项目得到“资金或实物支持”。无独有偶，葛兰素史克也向哈佛干细胞研究所支付了2500万美元，这是一项为期五年的合作项目，旨在开发治疗心脏病、癌症、糖尿病、肌肉骨骼疾病和其他领域的新药，工作将在哈佛和数家附属医院完成。
辉瑞正在尝试稍微独立的变化。它为旧金山和纽约的全新研究实验室租赁了空间，有一半的员工，一半与当地大学的博士后学生，包括加州大学旧金山;哥伦比亚大学;西奈山医学院;艾伯特爱因斯坦医学院;和威尔康奈尔医学院。该目标的目标是，该项目的首席科技官，被称为治疗创新的中心，是辉瑞和大学科学家利用最先进的生物技术和“在同一个替补席上工作”，找到大约每个实验室的八种有希望的化合物，足以在两年内通过早期人体试验进行良好。此时，PFizer将唯一对化合物的控制。根据Coyle的说法，自10月份建立旧金山实验室已鉴定了八种潜在药物，包括肿瘤学，免疫学和心脏病。 A third lab is expected this summer.
Neither Roche nor Pfizer would reveal how much money they’re investing, but other observers note that by piggybacking onto existing university facilities and staff, companies can save on overhead, new construction, supplies and salaries. For instance, Garaud says, several Roche projects use advanced-imaging facilities that were already in place at three universities in the Netherlands.
In addition to the more advanced status of the research, other factors make these arrangements different from the companies’ previous academic schmoozing. First, they are more structured. Whereas Roche scientists in the past might have asked a university scientist a question here and there for specific experiments, the new arrangement involves “true collaboration at the inception,” Garaud says. And at Pfizer, Coyle points out, “the individuals that partner with us will get complete access to Pfizer’s technology,” including proprietary antibody libraries.
即使没有这样的正式计划，毒品公司也越来越多地在大学旁边设立实验室，以便他们参加研讨会，安排私人抚养课程或至少呼吸剑桥，马萨诸塞州和帕洛阿尔托，加利福尼亚州的稀有空气。例如，诺华州将其在巴塞尔总部的研发锁，股票和培养皿搬到了一个与马萨诸塞术学院的分支分支的庭院的建筑物。同样，辉瑞最近从康涅狄格州Groton，康涅狄格州的一名研究人员转移到剑桥。Merck在哈佛医学院，贝特以色列专业医疗中心，Dana-Farber癌症研究所和其他名称医疗机构的医疗综合体中建立了一家12层的研究实验室。
Other major locales for this cross-fertilization include Washington University in St. Louis; Oxford University and the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute in the U.K.; and Beijing’s BGI, a genome sequencing research center.
另外，企业也在为他们带来学术成果。巴克莱银行（Barclays）的巴特勒说，尽管制药商一直聘用新晋的医学博士和博士，但“现在他们得到的是在学术界工作15年的经验丰富的科学家”，甚至是系主任或享有声望的教授头衔。在罗氏，加劳德说：“我已经要求我们的人力资源团队确保我们的搜索资料包括学术界。”
被引用的学术议员：默克·默克尔·罗森布拉特（Michael Rosenblatt）的首席医务人员，原院长？塔夫茨大学医学院;辉瑞公司神经科学研究官员首席科学官员迈克尔·埃尔斯·杰尔斯·德古克大学神经生物学乔治贝尔盖勒教授;？Anirvan Ghosh，即将成为Roche中枢神经系统研究的负责人，以前在加州大学的圣地亚哥生物科学部门的神经生物学董事长;哈佛医学院和马萨诸塞州综合医院的前教授，马萨诸塞州立医院的前教授，在马萨诸塞州的剑桥中诺艺术研究实验室运行北美北方的生物医学研究实验室。除了钓鱼人外，所有人都在过去的一年中聘用了。
研究也来自非易患来源。奥巴马政府在NIH创造了10亿美元的中心，被称为国家推进科学中心，并计划于10月推出，以跳跃的药物发展。根据NIH网站的说法，新中心将“寻求杠杆科学的方式，为行业的注意力带来新的思想和材料。”？这可以从筛选分子一直到人类测试，直到私营部门终于迈出了。单独来说，比尔和梅林达盖茨基金会等慈善资产在没有吸引工业的利润潜力的情况下为研究和制造提供资金，如非洲的艾滋病和疟疾。
在另一个重大转变,大公司ar组e working together on research. ?Through the Alzheimer’s Disease Neuroimaging Initiative, 22 drug manufacturers, the NIH and two foundations have jointly invested $67 million in long-term studies looking for biomarkers that might characterize progressive stages of the disease. Data from the 1,000-person study, which is being run by the National Institute on Aging, are openly available online to researchers. A different kind of collaboration is Enlight Biosciences, a private company established in Boston in 2008 by PureTech Ventures (a venture capital firm) plus several academics and six Big Pharmas: Abbott Laboratories, Johnson & Johnson, Lilly, Merck, Novartis and Pfizer. Enlight will invest about $40 million in drug development technology, with the member companies getting access to any results.
同样，这是一个与传统的合作，如胆固醇药物Vytorin和Zetia，共同开发的默克和独立先灵葆雅10年前急剧变化。这些通常都是一次性交易，以创造或销售特定的药物，涉及两家公司，每家公司都带来了特定的专业知识。相比之下，新的努力不是针对一种特定的药物和这句话不跟踪，应该怎么读？意思是“新的努力不是针对一个特定的药物，包括许多公司，其中一些将分享他们的成果？包括许多公司，其中一些将分享成果。
The upshot of all this outreach can be seen in the companies’ budgets. According to Cooper of Deloitte, Big Pharma has gone from allocating 80 percent of its R&D money internally five years ago to just 50 to 60 percent today. The change, says Pfizer’s Coyle, “is very challenging because most pharmaceuticals companies are centralized and vertically integrated.”
戏剧性的那些举动，他们只是开始。随着疾病的目标，政府法规和支付系统变得更加复杂，行业观察员表示，公司正在寻求局域网，以便在研究外面的整个专业领域。
Mehta Partners的创始人viren Mehta，将行业分解为四个基本技能：研究，开发，制造和营销。当他看到它时，没有理由一家公司应该期望掌握所有四个甚至两三个。“在未来将没有大型或小公司，Pharma和Biotech之间没有区别，”他预测。
The trend actually began in the 1980s with contract research organizations like Quintiles and Parexel — consulting firms that can conduct clinical trials or help companies maneuver the regulatory process. The earliest CROs, however, were limited mainly to statistical analysis and animal trials. Early last decade, Wyeth and Lilly each took a giant leap in outsourcing. As part of a total revamping of its research structure, Wyeth hired Accenture in 2001 to scan and “clean” the data from its clinical trials, returning the information to Wyeth for medical analysis, Robert Ruffolo Jr., who was then Wyeth’s senior vice president of R&D, said in 2005. In 2002, Lilly created an autonomous unit called Chorus Group specifically to outsource early testing.
直到最近，这些行动仍然是离群的。但在过去的几年里，企业一直在集体抛售各种责任。2007年底，百时美施贵宝聘请埃森哲负责药物上市后的大部分药物警戒或安全监测工作。2009年，默克公司将总部位于西雅图的基因表达实验室（从事早期基因分析）出售给了1997年成立于新泽西州的大型CRO科文斯。赛诺菲随后在一年后将两家研究网站出售给了科文斯。就在今年3月，礼来宣布将所有潜在化合物的生物分析外包给Advion BioSciences，Advion BioSciences是一家位于纽约州北部和印第安纳州的CRO，该公司将在人体试验之前对分子在实验模型中的吸收和代谢情况进行分析。
Genomics makes outsourcing even more feasible. Because drugs can be targeted to people with a particular genetic mutation, they can be tested in just those narrow populations rather than requiring traditional trials with thousands of subjects. That means the vast resources of large manufacturers may not be necessary to run the standard three series of human trials.
The castoffs won’t stop with R&D. Small companies already go outside for marketing, either by allying with Big Pharma or by hiring contract sales organizations similar to their research cousins. Pfrang of Deloitte says the big manufacturers too will turn to CSOs to supplement and support their in-house staff. This marketing help will be needed because “large pharma companies are redefining who their customers are, beyond just the prescribing physician,” says Pfrang’s colleague Orlan Boston, head of Deloitte’s M&A human capital practice in the Northeast. Today these decisions are also influenced by insurance companies, academic opinion leaders, patient advocacy organizations, pharmacies and companies that make the medical software that hospitals and doctors use to decide which drugs will be allowed in their formularies. Mehta predicts that patient groups, insurance companies and employers will play a larger role in drug development — in large part because companies won’t pursue third and fourth me-too drugs for which they won’t be reimbursed.
此外，Tufts的Kaitin认为CROS做更多的监管意见书。如果是这样，FDA的Woodcock表示，申请的来源不会影响监管过程。“我们想送一些东西，我们会看看它，”她承诺。
但是如果制药公司分配work right and left, no one is sure what will remain. “If you sit down with a company and say, ‘What is the core competency of your company,’?” Kaitin sighs, “you’ll get an argument among their senior officials.” Indeed, experts offer a range of answers, from conducting clinical trials to global marketing to ultimate legal responsibility for safety. Inevitably, some will shrink, focusing on one or two specialties.
尽管如此，一些共同的主题似乎出现了。研究不再是核心竞争力。不同的公司将具有不同的力量领域。有些人可能会比一般承包商更少，这些承包商会收集他们的分包商的工作以提交给FDA。有些人只能在配送机背后的品牌名称生存。
打击,收缩在某种程度上是一个trend toward expansion into nontraditional but related categories, as a hedge. One such area is emerging markets, where the populations can finally afford expensive brand-name drugs. IMAP, an organization of global M&A advisory firms, says that big Western drug and biotech manufacturers are targeting Argentina, Brazil, China, Egypt, India, Indonesia, Mexico, Pakistan, Poland, Romania, Russia, South Africa, Thailand, Turkey, Ukraine, Venezuela and Vietnam, whose combined pharma sales, IMAP predicts, will grow 15 to 17 percent this year, up from about $367.5 billion in 2010. Abbott, for one, acquired Indian generics maker Piramal Healthcare for $3.72 billion last May, and Sanofi paid $662 million for Medley, the third-largest drug company in Brazil.
Experts like Deloitte’s Pfrang and Hay’s Wilcox also see Big Pharma branching out more and more into nonprescription health areas, such as diagnostic tests, generics, animal medications and over-the-counter treatments. A strong line of consumer brands like ChapStick, Advil and Dimetapp was considered one of the advantages that Wyeth brought to its merger with Pfizer. And Novartis includes eye care, generics and consumer health (meaning nonprescription and animal drugs) among its five “pillars,” along with pharma and a joint category of vaccines and diagnostics.
However, it’s not clear how strong that expansion trend may be. Pfizer CEO Ian Read has said he is reviewing all nonpharma areas, and in April the company sold off a capsule manufacturing unit to Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. for $2.38 billion. The unit had generated $750 million of Pfizer’s $67.8 billion in sales last year. GlaxoSmithKline said it will shed a cluster of over-the-counter brands with a total $813 million in sales. “There’s a question whether some companies have diversified too much,” says Deloitte’s Cooper. She suggests that the most successful companies will expand only into narrowly targeted areas with a direct relationship to their pharma expertise, like diagnostic tests linked to personalized medicine and devices that also incorporate drugs. Meanwhile, China illustrated some of the risks of emerging markets when it announced this spring that it was ordering drug price cuts.
所有这些萎缩，外包和重新思考行业模式的预测导致了猜测哪种名称将作为全成熟，真正的公司生存的明显的客厅游戏。
罗氏和诺华似乎可以获得最多的选票。巴克莱的巴特勒引用马萨诸塞州诺华的尖端实验室，虽然研究公司华盛顿分析执行副总裁IRA亏损，专门从事制药，赞扬公司的“广泛多样化的产品线”。当然，Roche源于它的Genentech，最古老，最大，最成功的生物技术之一，具有像Avastin和Herceptin的癌症一样的群体。至于回报，诺华在过去十年中的行业最佳股票表现的虚拟领带，罗斯在迈克斯的第一半。顾问是Mehta Partners的印度手臂，提供公司的统计分析。对于短期来说，基于今年的第一季度结果，默克是一个惊喜的胜利者，利润几乎推动销售和深刻成本削减的略微增加，而且其股票上涨了28美分。诺华也击败了销售和利润期望。
波士顿咨询的收银台上，Pharma成功的秘诀与任何行业相同：“拥有有效的策略并训练并纪律处分。”
虽然T. Rowe Price的Jenner不是命名的名字，但他在未来三年内看到了一个震撼，只有那些拥有强大的后期管道的公司仍然是全尺寸的公司。
Not all observers believe that the basic industry model will change so drastically. Some think that any increase in outsourcing will be limited to early-stage research arrangements with universities, somewhere between the old-style theoretical research and midstage human trials, mainly because that’s where Big Pharma is weakest. These skeptics argue that there’s no point seeking outside cooperation beyond basic research, because industry is better than any potential partners at all the other functions it’s been doing for years. The goals for a drug company official, Tufts’s Kaitin says, are FDA approval, a promotion–– and a bonus. By contrast, he adds, an academic scientist seeks “a government grant to continue your research and publication.”
With its new labs, Pfizer has to balance its need for trade secrets with its partners’ expectation of academic freedom, Coyle acknowledges. Add to those problems the ivory tower’s historic disdain for commerce, which has only been amplified by recent scandals in which drug companies have paid professors to write — or even worse, merely add their names to — articles in medical journals praising those same companies’ products. But those hurdles must be overcome. Big Pharma can no longer cruise happily into the future on weak and expensive research, limping mergers and a conceit that all new products must be invented internally.