The Burrill Report

Ten global biopharmaceutical companies are forming a pre-competitive collaboration to identify and solve common drug development challenges, improve clinical studies, and accelerate the pace at which medicines make it to market.

“We aim to reduce bottlenecks in R&D and increase efficiency,” says Garry Neil, interim CEO of the new Philadelphia-based venture, TransCelerate BioPharma. “We have an obligation to stakeholders to find…new and transformative ways of doing things. We are really working collectively in a way we haven’t done before.”

TransCelerate’s members will initially include Abbott, AstraZeneca, Boehringer Ingelheim, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Eli Lilly and Company, GlaxoSmithKline, Johnson & Johnson, Pfizer, Genentech, and Sanofi. Other companies have been welcomed to join. The group was formed in August and announced at a meeting of R&D heads at BioPharm America, a conference held in Boston. It is seeking non-profit status.

Each of the ten founding companies will combine financial and other resources, including personnel, and work together to share meaningful information and expertise to advance the collaboration. But the companies have not announced how much money or how many employees they’ll dedicate to the venture.

"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," says Neil, who is also a managing director and partner at Apple Tree Partners, a New York City-based venture capital firm.

TransCelerate will initially focus on improving drugmakers’ approach to clinical studies by funding projects to streamline and standardize their execution. As shared solutions in clinical research and other areas are developed, the group will then involve industry alliances.

Janet Woodcock, director of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, applauded the group’s effort to address “a series of longstanding challenges in new drug development.” She says TransCelerate “has the promise to lead to new paradigms and cost savings in drug development, all of which would strengthen the industry and its ability to develop innovative and much-needed therapies for patients."


September 21, 2012
http://www.burrillreport.com/article-drugmakers_band_together_on_challenges.html