RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 How to Revive Breakthrough Innovation in the Pharmaceutical Industry
JF Science Translational Medicine
FD American Association for the Advancement of Science
SP 89cm16
OP 89cm16
DO 10.1126/scitranslmed.3002273
VO 3
IS 89
A1 Munos, Bernard H.
A1 Chin, William W.
YR 2011
UL http://stm.sciencemag.org/content/3/89/89cm16.abstract
AB Over the past 20 years, pharmaceutical companies have implemented conservative management practices to improve the predictability of therapeutics discovery and success rates of drug candidates. This approach has often yielded compounds that are only marginally better than existing therapies, yet require larger, longer, and more complex trials. To fund them, companies have shifted resources away from drug discovery to late clinical development; this has hurt innovation and amplified the crisis brought by the expiration of patents on many best-selling drugs. Here, we argue that more breakthrough therapeutics will reach patients only if the industry ceases to pursue “safe” incremental innovation, reengages in high-risk discovery research, and adopts collaborative innovation models that allow sharing of knowledge and costs among collaborators.