Fail Fast, Fail Early

Not the most inspiring of titles, but ask any medicinal chemist what the chances of his or her lead molecule making it through clinical trials and it's about one in ten (and falling). And no matter what anyone tells you, no one knows which development projects will fail when on the journey from the lab to your bathroom cabinet. Yes, that pill you pop for hay fever or hypertension is the result of a whole lot of great science and one big dose of good fortune.

The development strategy of big pharma embraces this fact as they seek to spend the least amount of money on the ones that don't make it. Fail fast, fail early is their mantra. So why don't they run tests in parallel (assuming it's ethical and legal) and speed up the process? Unfortunately, with these odds history and a few calculations in Excel tells you its a mug's game to try to rush perfection to much. What you need is a development pipeline (which is what equity analysts sweat about as the last blockbuster goes off patent) and then you can play the numbers game and be reasonably patient.

But wait, what about small guy who just has one or two throws of the dice and mix in a doze of commercial reality that their wonder drug or medical device has a limited market potential? And what if they don't have the luxury of funding their development from previous successes? Then they have to raise funding from VCs who don't want to wait a decade to see a return and even then the market potential may not give sufficient returns to make the investment add up financially. This is the problem facing many Healthcare Technology companies and it ain't easy to beat the numbers.

Complaining about the short time horizon and greediness of VCs is about as useful as trying to rush a product through clinical trials (and by that I mean spend more money on failures faster). It just isn't that productive. So what is the answer to this connundrum? The obvious answer is to licence more things earlier and accept a smaller slice of the pie if they make it through to market - which is what most smaller biotechs do. Alternatively, you can find a friendly source of development funds that is prepared to wait for a return and see your project through from cradle to grave - it's called working for Glaxo! But is there a third way?

Death Of Animal Testing

An interesting article in June 18th issue of C&E News predicting reduced animal testing in favour of experiments utilising human cells and components by the USA National Research Council. They say advances in systems biology and methods to test cells in vitro is reaching the stage where it will provide more information on human toxicity than high-dose in vivo testing on animals.

This may cheer our Venturefest Yorkshire Business Plan winner, Kirkstall Ltd. who are developing a multi-chamber bioreactor that utilises human cells. To read the NRC report, click here.

Bioscience YorkshireEnterprise Fellows

Academic research targeted explicitly at producing commercialisable technology is the focus of what is said to be the largest cluster of its type in Europe. And its happening here in Yorkshire!
The Bioscience Yorkshire Enterprise Fellowship is designed for post-docs, researchers and PhD students who have the skills and the desire to create a business based on their research. The programme provides participants with the support and mentoring to commercialise their ideas and research findings. The goal of the scheme is to increase entrepreneurial activity in Yorkshire universities' bioscience departments and to accelerate and support the formation of solid and sustainable start-up bioscience businesses.

Attending presentations from the fellows, you could see how fired up about their research they were - but also how producing a commercial outcome was also explicitly part of their mindset - something that might have been alien to them had not this scheme focused their deliverables towards an addressable market! In the end this is what differentiates technology development from enterprise. Nearly half of the fellows are thinking about starting a business based on their ideas. Great stuff!