There’s Strength in Numbers
Collaboration is paramount to achieve innovation in the pharma and biopharma industry, insists Peter Corr, senior vice president, science and technology, Pfizer.
By Tom Branna
Editorial Director
There’s strength in numbers. Pharmaceutical companies must look out to other disciplines, supply partners, even competitors in some cases, in order to develop the next generation of pharmaceutical and biopharmaceutical products.
“How do we change our industry from a 2% success rate to 4%?” asked Peter B. Corr, senior vice president, science and technology, Pfizer, Inc. “Are we just extraordinarily stupid? No! We’re working in black boxes with very little understanding of biology or how a disease proliferates.”
Speaking at a recent meeting of the New York Pharma Forum, Dr. Corr acknowledged that his company had stumbled badly in recent weeks, what with the termination of all torcetrapib clinical trials. On December 2, Pfizer announced that the independent Data Safety Monitoring Board (DSMB) monitoring its Phase III morbidity and mortality study for torcetrapib recommended terminating the study because of an imbalance of mortality and cardiovascular events.
“We had been working on torcetrapib since 1992,” recalled Dr. Corr. “(Terminating the program) is a huge hit.”
Despite the problems surrounding torcetrapib, Dr. Corr warned against companies becoming risk averse. He noted that it is extremely difficult to be innovative when it requires so many levels of management to make a decision.
At the same time, research and development is often measured in decades.
“(Today) we make investments in drug discovery that won’t see the light of day until 2018,” he told the audience. “We’re trying to truncate the process, but so much time is needed at each phase. Maybe we need a new business model.”
Pfizer, he observed, may have as many as 400 discovery projects in the pipeline at once. Another 200 may be in development, but only five or six make it to late-stage trials. But he insisted that a new business model doesn’t mean cost-cutting.
“You can’t cut your way to greatness,” he remarked. Instead, he suggested that pharma and biopharma companies could find ways to collaborate. To help reduce risk, he suggested that companies should share both the rewards and downside potential through vigorous licensing programs. Dr. Corr observed that incremental innovation is just as important as major breakthroughs.
Finding New Partners
In the past year and a half, Pfizer has spent $18 billion to acquire new technology. For example, in May, 2005, Pfizer entered an agreement to acquire Renovis Pharmaceuticals, which gave the company access to promising treatments for Alzheimer’s Disease. Prior to that, Pfizer acquired Esperion, a company with a strong position in heart disease treatments.
“A key point in both acquisitions is that they are running as subsidiaries, so we don’t need to integrate them.”
Pfizer is focused on 11 therapeutic areas, all with their own division heads. But years ago, company management realized that it had to reach out to succeed.
“We’re looking at 4,800 compounds to see if we want to be a partner with these companies,” he explained. “And we’re moving five-fold faster on these deals than we did just six years ago.”
How did Pfizer get so nimble? Dr. Corr credited the turnaround to the company’s new CEO Jeff Kindler, who has empowered the entire management team by insisting that decision-making must get pushed down through the entire organization.
In addition to this management evolution, companies must stop thinking of competitors as enemies and work together through initiatives such as the Biomarker Consortium, which facilitates drug development by working with the FDA, NIH and others to establish evidence in early trials that a drug can reach its target and modify that target in some positive way. The consortium is also working to identify early marketers for organ toxicity that can better define safety issues; identify criteria for dose selection for Phase III clinical trials and provide new surrogate markers as endpoints for regulatory approval.
Elsewhere, Pfizer is working with Abbott Laboratories and others on the Genetic Association Information Network (GAIN) initiative, which seeks to expand collaboration efforts on the genome.
Finally, Pfizer is collaborating with other drug companies through the Severe Adverse Effect Consortium to pool resources and try to find an answer to Steven Johnson Syndrome (SJS), an immune-complex–mediated hypersensitivity complex that is a severe expression of erythema multiforme. SJS is a serious systemic disorder with the potential for severe morbidity and even death.
Get the Word Out
Besides improving corporate speed both internally and through collaboration, pharma and biopharma companies must do a better job of communicating the benefits the industry brings to human health. Dr. Corr noted that every $1 spent on a pill or ampoule saves $6-7 in overall health costs. Unfortunately for the industry, most reporters, legislators and consumer groups only focus on the cost of therapies to the consumer.
“We must educate these groups about what we do and the value we bring. If not, we will disappear,” he insisted.
