GSK Tries to Mimic Real-World Biotech

Article preview reprinted from IN VIVO - February 2009

Not satisfied with its R&D experiments to date, GSK has taken its most radical step yet toward re-creating biotech within its walls: even smaller units complete with investment boards occupied by external VCs and CEOs and milestone-based funding and external VCs.

GSK Tries to Mimic Real-World Biotech

Article preview reprinted from IN VIVO - February 2009

When GlaxoSmithKline PLC first announced its Centers of Excellence for Drug Discovery (CEDD) structure post-merger in 2000, the idea was to break down huge corporate line-function R&D into more focused, and hence productive, units. Each spanned discovery to proof-of-concept in a particular therapeutic area (or areas); each had about 300 to 400 scientists and they competed with each other for company funds.

That was seen as pretty radical at the time. But nine years on, after several iterations and additions, including a biologics CEDD and a partnering-only unit known as the Center of Excellence for External Drug Discovery (CEEDD), it's clear that CEDDs version 1.0, as it might be called, failed to address the R&D productivity problem. (See "R&D Productivity at GSK? He CEDD, She CEDD," In Vivo Europe Rx, January 2004 and "GSK's Risk-Sharing Deals to Compete with In-House R&D," IN VIVO, March 2006.) GSK's late-stage pipeline appears woefully inadequate in the face of patent expiries--most notably, that of COPD and asthma treatment fluticasone/salmeterol (Advair).

Hence GSK's management, under new-ish CEO Andrew Witty, introduced the latest, and most radical, change within GSK R&D one that takes this Big Pharma as close as is arguably possible to mimicking real-world biotech within its walls. First of all, the unit-size got smaller, with the creation, announced in mid-2008, of two dozen or so pathway-focused drug performance units (DPUs), each with just about 50 scientists. Most of these sit within the CEDDs (with a couple of stand-alone exceptions), and as for the CEDDs themselves, the buzzwords are ownership, accountability, and efficiency.

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Companies mentioned in this article:

Amgen Inc.

Archemix Corp.

Ardea Biosciences Inc.

AstraZeneca PLC

Biotica Technology Ltd.

Bristol-Myers Squibb Co.

Cellzome AG

ChemoCentryx Inc.

Dynavax Technologies Corp.

Exelixis Inc.

Galapagos NV

Genmab AS

GlaxoSmithKline PLC

Genelabs Technologies Inc.

Sirtris Pharmaceuticals Inc.

Merck & Co. Inc.

NeuroSearch AS

Novartis AG

Novartis Pharma AG

Idenix Pharmaceuticals Inc.

Oncomed Pharmaceuticals Inc.

Pfizer Inc.

Coley Pharmaceutical Group Inc.

Regulus Therapeutics LLC

Roche

Sanofi-Aventis

Schering-Plough Corp.

Takeda Pharmaceutical Co. Ltd.

Millennium Pharmaceuticals Inc.

Theravance Inc.

Wyeth


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