Drug Industry Leaders See Collaboration as Key to Greater Productivity, According to Tufts Center for the Study of Drug Development

BOSTON, MA--(Marketwired - Aug 13, 2013) -  Responding to a widely shared need to improve the probability of R&D success, leaders from the research-based drug industry, recently convened by the Tufts Center for the Study of Drug Development, agreed that collaboration holds strong promise for improving the rate at which much needed medicines can be developed and brought to market.

"Nearly everyone involved in drug development, including pharmaceutical and biotech companies, contract research organizations, academic research centers, investors, and patient organizations, agree that partnerships based on shared knowledge help to diversify risk while improving R&D productivity," said Tufts CSDD Director Kenneth I Kaitin.

A wave of recent and anticipated patent expirations on many top-selling medicines, coupled with investor demand for speedier development of new drugs, has prompted the research-based drug industry to explore and embrace new development paradigms.

Kaitin noted, "The skills and logistical coordination needed to drive today's drug development programs are often too complex for individual research organizations to tackle in isolation. While best practices are still evolving, the encouraging news is that new, collaborative approaches to drug development will likely lead to innovative new medicines reaching the market faster and in greater numbers than we've seen in the past."

Key points made by the industry leaders at the roundtable discussion, summarized in the August Tufts CSDD R&D Management Report, released today, included the following:

• Alliances, collaborations, and consortia will continue to drive improvements in clinical success, while reducing total spending, with drug developers retaining only those functions they consider core competencies.
  
  
• Shrinking internal research budgets among all organizations -- from startups to Big Pharma -- are spurring greater reliance on new forms of financing, including venture philanthropy and funding syndicates.
  
  
• Functional outsourcing to share risk and reduce cost can lead to data fragmentation due, in part, to the lack of industry-wide data standards; cloud-based solutions are emerging to address the issue, but have yet to gain widespread acceptance.
  
  

SCHEDULED TUFTS CSDD EXECUTIVE FORUM ROUNDTABLES

Upcoming Tufts CSDD Executive Forum Roundtable meetings:

Sept. 12, 2013 -- Outsourcing to Maximize Operating Efficiency
Nov. 7, 2013 -- Enhancing Product Value through Comparator and Co-Therapy Clinical Trials

ABOUT THE TUFTS CENTER FOR THE STUDY OF DRUG DEVELOPMENT

The Tufts Center for the Study of Drug Development (http://csdd.tufts.edu) at Tufts University provides strategic information to help drug developers, regulators, and policy makers improve the quality and efficiency of pharmaceutical development, review, and utilization. Tufts CSDD, based in Boston, conducts a wide range of in-depth analyses on pharmaceutical issues and hosts symposia, workshops, and public forums, and publishes Tufts CSDD Impact Reports, a bi-monthly newsletter providing analysis and insight into critical drug development issues.