Innovator Spotlight: Pharma Taking Open Innovation Medicine
Dr. Teresa Gonzalo
Teresa Gonzalo has linked her vocation as a researcher with a doctorate in Biomedicine with the ambition to release products conceived in the laboratory to benefit society. The need to develop a business plan to transform the market in product innovation motivated Teresa to found and direct a spin-off from her university: Ambiox Biotech. The company’s objective is to curb the impact of AIDS with a nanotechnology-based microbicidal gel that enables individuals to protect themselves from HIV infection during sexual intercourse. Teresa is also the winner of the 2011 TR35 Spain’s Humanitarian of the Year award.
The twentieth century has witnessed the success of drug discovery and implementation to cure diseases. However, a paradigm shift in the pharmaceutical industry is now becoming a fact: the model of pharmaceutical development is already sold.
The dramatic increase in investment in R&D by the pharmaceutical industry has not been matched by a proportional increase in the production of new therapeutic products. In other words, more R&D spending by pharma companies is resulting in fewer drugs.
And now, the frightening reality facing the pharmaceutical industry: within the next year, drugs with sales of more than $50 billion are coming off patent. Left unsaid was that the incredible profits associated with these sales are also coming to an end in the next 12 months as generic pharmaceutical companies develop biochemically equivalent compounds and sell them at a reduced.
What are the solutions? Open innovation is the model that pharma companies are turning to right now as a replacement to the traditional model which is based on developing R&D from their own basement laboratories, i.e, closed innovation. Open innovation, as defined by Henry Chesbough, occurs through exploitation of knowledge diffusion outside corporate R&D. Once open innovation is adopted, the organization’s boundaries become permeable which allows for the combining of company resources with the external co-operators.
This model includes acquiring patent licenses from small biotech companies, agreements to share intellectual property (IP) and resources that can speed drug discovery (backed by the United Nations, Nature Biotechnology 29,1063–1065(2011)), and digging in the databases of research institutes and universities that are creating projects in co-development.
As usual, the Internet has come to leverage all this information for good and new platforms are being used to facilitate the much needed exchange.
INNOGET is a Spanish initiative that promotes a marketplace connecting R&D directors, licensing managers, technology brokers, scientists, technology transfer officers, business developers and inventors. On their portal, a biotech company may post its technology offer and a pharma company may announce its technology request. Similarly, another example of open innovation for pharma and biotech would be INNOVARO pharma licensing— a group that is operating from the UK that also covers other sectors such as energy, food and drink as well.
The Genome Spain Foundation is preparing an innovative project where a virtual conference will promote the interaction between biotech and pharma by having an entrepreneur pitch via video as well as company presentations to facilitate the dissemination of biotechnology opportunities at the national and international level to pharmaceutical companies. As an example, Merck has promoted an initiative for biotech entrepreneurs called EmprendeGo, whereby they strive to support entrepreneurial initiatives in the health sector. In this case, Merck has the privilege to oversee innovative projects in biotechnology and have priority over any third party to lead the project and have shares in the company.
A successful group on LinkedIn called Pharmaceutical & Biotech Licensing & Business Network, with nearly 3500 members, is actively connecting different stakeholders in the sector with up-to-date information from technology offers from research institutions and recent deals in licensing opportunities.
All these platforms allow a new communication tool between offer and demand in this sector which may promote targeted innovation in an open mode using already available resources— which from my point of view is where the future is heading.
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