[Ip-health] Big pharma gravitates to the groves of academe

[Riaz K Tayob]

After vigorous denial that there is a problem with research at the WHO
IGWG, this is a clear sign of "problems"...


FT: Big pharma gravitates to the groves of academe
Big pharma gravitates to the groves of academe

By Rebecca Knight

Published: September 2 2008 03:00 | Last updated: September 2 2008 03:00

Beset by drug failures and limited late-stage pipelines, big
pharmaceutical companies are increasingly looking outside their own
walls for scientific discoveries by partnering with academic institutions.

GlaxoSmithKline last July entered into a fiveyear, $25m deal with
Harvard to support stem-cell research, particularly in the areas of
heart disease and cancer.

In June, AstraZeneca, the Anglo-Swedish pharmaceutical company, signed a
multi-year collaboration with Columbia University to develop novel
therapeutics for metabolic diseases.

Meanwhile, last April Pfizer - the world's largest biomedical and
pharmaceutical company - formed a three-year, $14m collaboration with
four research universities to study the field of diabetes.

Colleges and universities have become the next generation research and
development labs for drugmakers at a time when they are battling
increased generic competition for top-selling medicines, and a dearth of
drugs in the pipeline.

"Pharma is feeling the pressure," said Bob Higgins, professor of
healthcare innovation at Harvard and co-founder of the
Massachusetts-based venture capital firm Highland Capital.

Mr Higgins added: "If you are a pharmaceuticals executive looking at
what's coming off-patent in the next few years, and at what's in Phase
3, the answer on both is bad. It is not just bad, it is scary."

At the same time, universities are eager to receive additional sources
of financial support.

In 2004 the White House called for reduced spending in order to
compensate for tax cuts and a rising deficit.

However, since then, the budget of the National Institutes of Health,
which funds the bulk of biomedical research in the US, has been flat or,
adjusting for inflation, down.

Pharmaceutical companies have a long history of partnering with
universities for drugs research and technology, but these new
entrepreneurial arrangements represent a departure from the traditional
model.

In previous industry-academic partnerships, pharmaceutical companies
engaged university researchers for a certain line of research that
benefited their projects, and that research was carried out exclusively
by the university scientist.

New ventures, however, tend to involve teams of university and industry
scientists working together on wide-ranging experiments to advance new
drug discovery and stimulate basic research.

Jan Lundberg, executive vice-president of global discovery research at
AstraZeneca, said the new agreements also differed from past
partnerships because they laid out clearly how patents were arranged, as
well as how publication rights were handled.

"It's good to do that from the start so we don't end up in unproductive
conversations," he said.

"Both sides need to go into this with open eyes."

The partnerships require mindset adjustments for industry as well as
academia, according to Corey Goodman, who leads the Pfizer
Biotherapeutics and Bio Innovation Center.

Mr Goodman said: "In the past academics thought that pharma companies
were too secretive, while pharma companies thought that academics lacked
a firm understanding of the proprietary perspective and what it takes to
move drugs from the laboratory into the clinic."

"Both sides have gotten over their hang-ups and have now realised that
we need to break down the barriers.

"Pharma is realising it cannot do everything on its own."

Mr Goodman, who is

a former University of California research professor, said the
partnerships were necessary to speed the pace of drug research and
discovery.

"If big pharma stays siloedand the academic world stays siloed, that is
a huge loss for human health," he said.

"The bottom line is: we need each other."

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2008

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