Innovation is the life-blood of our industry: How do we keep it pumping? (Guest blog)
08.06.16
This week I’ve been in San Francisco at BIO, along with 15,000 biotech and pharma leaders who came together to discover new opportunities and promising partnerships. California’s tech-led ‘innovate or die’ mantra made for a fitting backdrop to the discussion.
So what are the factors that make some biotech partnerships fly and others fall flat? When should you partner and when should you hold back? GSK has over 100 active partnerships at any one time. Here are some of the lessons we’ve learned about making innovation-driven partnerships work.
A shared purpose
Nothing unites people to action more than a common goal, especially if it has the potential to save lives.
The meningitis B vaccine breakthrough is a great example of how a shared purpose can bring people together and keep them motivated through the long years of vaccine development. It took around 20 years of endeavour, characterised by moments both of soaring success and of frustrating set-backs: vaccines R&D is most certainly not for the faint-hearted.
The breakthrough came when scientists at Chiron, led by Rino Rappuoli, teamed up with Craig Venter, leveraging his work on decoding the human genome for the meningitis B bacteria, and with key academic and institutional partners, to complete the development process.
GSK came into the picture through the acquisition of Novartis Vaccines, in March 2015. Maintaining the spirit of partnership, we lost no time in forming an agreement with the UK Government for the vaccine to be introduced into the national immunisation programme –fulfilling finally the vision that inspired decades of research.
Complementary skills and expertise
There is no doubt that partnership works best when we each bring something unique but complementary to the table. For me, nothing demonstrates this better than our 30-year quest to develop a vaccine against malaria.
Over this period, hundreds of people around the world have been involved: starting in the 1980s with the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research, right through to the launch of the Phase III trial in 2009, with the PATH Malaria Vaccine Initiative, funding from BMGF and the African scientists who ran the trial in malaria-endemic countries.
It combined GSK’s expertise in bringing products through late-stage development with PATH’s infrastructure and capacity building know-how, together with their in-depth knowledge of the disease on the ground. The vaccine has now received a positive scientific recommendation from the European Medicines Agency and a policy recommendation from the WHO, moving it closer to the point at which it can start to help control a disease that killed almost 500 million people last year.
Relationships based on trust…and built on science
When the Ebola outbreak began in 2014, it quickly became apparent that this was an outbreak like no other. We needed to move quickly. Being able to leverage existing ,trusted relationships allowed us to mobilise a small team of experts to accelerate development of a pre-clinical vaccine that we had in hand. Working with the WHO, the NIH and academic partners, and with support from the Wellcome Trust, the EC and BMGF, we were able to do in a few months what would usually take years.
As successful as that effort was, finding a better way to respond to such threats is something GSK is working on actively and will require strong partnership.
A convening power
Perhaps most importantly, it takes someone to get it started. This is where initiatives like IMI can be extremely valuable, because they act as catalysts, encouraging cooperation and collaboration to tackle shared goals.
For example, we know the value that vaccines bring to public health. We also know that vaccine safety is always our top priority. But in some areas people have real concerns about safety. Through the BioVacSafe project, we are collaborating with 15 teams from universities, non-profits, pharmaceutical companies and public bodies, with funding from IMI, to develop tools that enable faster, more effective testing of vaccine safety. This could help in the early identification of very rare adverse events that may only be seen when an entire population is immunised.
Moreover, it’s particularly important for Europe because our industry remains one of the largest innovative industries in the region.
Only by continuing to prioritise partnership and funding for innovative vaccine technologies will vaccines fulfil their promise of tackling emerging threats, protecting vulnerable populations such as pregnant women and the elderly, and tackling major health threats like antimicrobial resistance.
