So says Lilly CEO John Lechleiter in a London speech recounted in Fierce Biotech.
Too long to develop new proudcts. Too much money spent. Too little revenue returned for the effort. Lechleiter says the model needs to change to become both more entrepreneurial and to evolve to the formation of global networks of collaborators.
In this way, developers can share investment, risk and rewards stemming from new drug development efforts. It needs to be done now. And -- regulators have to participate to help trial design and evaluation. The goverment also has to help create the "environment where innovation can thrive" (see yesterday's Lechleiter post on clusters).
In the meantime, whiile these type sof changes are beginning to work their way through various Big Pharma players -- we can continue to expect to see M&A activity (if anyone is left to buy) and restructuring (i.e. downsizing) of R&D departments that have failed to deliver.
Sanofi CEO Chris Viehbacher says, "You really have to put your portfolio through the R&D equivalent of a bank stress test. Most companies have not been as tough as they should be in figuring out what products should be in there..."
Posted by Bruce Lehr Feb 10th 2011.
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