Scientific Collaboration Leads to Faster Drug Development

What does sharing look like in the pharma industry?

In a recent survey conducted by Charles River, 59 percent believe our health care system is broken, but they also overwhelmingly agree that collaboration is the key to faster drug development and more nimble responses to future pandemics. But what does collaboration look like in practice?

Big pharma and academia

For COVID especially, companies and universities teamed up to research and manufacture vaccines and treatments to try and bring an end to the pandemic. AstraZeneca, BioNTech, Moderna and Pfizer – the big names in COVID vaccine development – all collaborated with academic institutions to speed up development of life-saving vaccines. The rapid development of these products was also aided by the Chinese scientist who first sequenced the virus and shared it with the research world—the ultimate act of collaboration. The success of those vaccines and the fruitfulness of industry-academic collaborations is also playing out on the COVID-19 treatment side.

For example Merck, Ridgeback Biotherapeutics, and a nonprofit biotech organization from Emory University are collaborating on molnupiravir – an oral antiviral treatment for COVID. The drug was developed through Drug Innovation Ventures at Emory (DRIVE), and exclusively licensed to Ridgeback (and who in turn licensed it to Merck).

The drug, originally developed for other indications such as influenza, has shown promising results in Phase 3 trails in patients with moderate to severe COVID symptoms. In response to these promising results, Merck has ramped up production of the drug ahead of formal authorization and has also entered into voluntary licensing agreements with a generic drug manufacturer in India to provide molnupiravir to low- and middle-income countries. (This stands in contrast to major vaccine makers who, thus far, have not been willing to do any tech transfer with producers in developing countries.)

Nonprofits nudge drug development

While big pharma companies are looking into many drugs at once, non-profit drug development groups tend to focus on one disease at a time. The Foundation for Angelman Syndrome Therapeutics (FAST), for example is focused on finding a treatment for the rare disease Angelman Syndrome. One popular modus operandi for non-profits is to research and develop a promising drug candidate for their disease of choice, and then license it to a larger for-profit company to take it over the finish line faster.

Cure Rare Disease, a non-profit biotechnology company, was initially founded by Rich Horgan to find a cure for his brother Terry’s rare disease. Since its inception, the company has expanded its goals to consider any patient with rare disease – trying to bring customized therapeutics to patients with no existing treatments.

“Collaboration is literally at the heart of everything we do,” said Horgan. “We collaborate with academic as well as industry teams. With our academics, generally we rely on them to do the initial drug ideation and creation, as well as the in vitro validation. And then we start to migrate those studies at some point to our industry collaborators (like Charles River).”

Corporate-charitable partnerships, like those pursued by Cure Rare Disease, brings drugs through the process faster than if the nonprofits tried to do it alone.

Drug development as a relay race

At each phase of drug development, there are opportunities for collaboration. From discovery through to filing for approval, each step has the potential to be optimized by working together.

“You get so many different perspectives along the value chain, that often times one researcher alone is insufficient to get any drug through the entire process,” said Horgan. “So, what we've tried to harness is the perspectives of the early stage. Academics who understand the fundamentals of the technology, and then combining those perspectives with the manufacturing and translational expertise, which are just so key. [We need] people who can hit the doubles and triples and the singles to get us through the day, more than the rock star who hits a home run from time to time.”

Communication is key to drug success

According to Horgan, the only potential downside he has noticed from collaborating with industry is communication inefficiency. When you have to start a key meeting with a lengthy recap to get everyone on the same page, it can waste time.

However, he notes that issues like this are easily resolved with clear communication. If everyone gets the same meeting brief, for example, the actual meeting can start with everyone on the same page. Brainstorming sessions are more valuable when everyone is on board, and no one needs the relevant background repeated to them.

In the highly competitive field of drug development, collaboration might seem counterintuitive to profits. However, in reality, good science thrives on collaboration – and good drugs need good science.