Invited Speaker

Partnerships Between Drug Companies and CROs are Helping Shape a New Paradigm in Drug Discovery
Ashis K. Saha
USA

Adoption of the ‘networked business’ model by pharmaceutical industry about 2 decades ago initiated the growth of the ‘Contract Research Organization’ (CRO) industry. From a market size of $ 2 billion in 1993 the CRO industry grew to $ 15 billion in 2005 and is envisaged to grow annually at a rate of 16% in years to come. What started as outsourcing of routine activities such as synthetic chemistry in drug discovery, later stage clinical trial management and low cost manufacturing has evolved into strategic outsourcing with focus on innovation and risk sharing. The extensive challenges brought on by escalating drug development costs, late stage failures are further strengthening the networked business model, wherein the pharmaceutical giants are looking for capacity and capabilities in a CRO not only for supplementing their in-house resources, but also for collaborative integrated discovery projects. While the growth & partnering opportunities for CROs are evident, the CRO industry having transcended from growth to maturation phase is besieged with its own challenges of slowing revenue growth, reduction in number of CROs and fewer new clients. In these set of circumstances it becomes pertinent for the CROs to ensure they are ready for the emerging high value opportunities and work out strategies to gain new expertise, find a niche either in a technology platform or therapeutic specialty, enter new growth markets or a combination of them, in order to effectively partner and help the pharmaceutical industry in meeting the challenges being faced by it. In this talk, we will outline how such a strategy is helping foster growth at TCG Life Sciences beyond task based contracts to program based discovery collaborations.