Changing Strategies: Progress in Pre-Competitive Pharma Collaboration

This Health Industry Insights Perspective provides insight into progress in advancing pre-competitive collaboration in the pharmaceutical industry. With major patent expiration horizons coming closer by the day, the need for pharmaceutical companies to transform themselves for the future is becoming increasingly urgent. In their search for sustainability, companies have cut back staffing to the bone in attempts to optimize operational efficiencies, scrutinized drug pipelines to focus only on highly promising new drugs, and reassessed which activities within the organization are considered core competencies. Companies have also recognized that some research supporting drug development fails to provide significant competitive advantages to be considered core and that it may be possible to share research costs with companies sharing mutual interest in specific efforts on a pre-competitive basis. While wildly out of the norm for traditional pharmaceutical research, pre-competitive collaboration in the life science industry is becoming real as companies increasingly accept the realities of a changing industry.