The era in which Big Pharma's in-house laboratories could afford years of experimentation to eventually churn out the billionaire drug is at sunset. In a market characterized by the rise of generic drugs and the expiry of patents, companies are cutting costs and the watchword becomes outsourcing research by knocking on universities and other centres, in the meantime intensifying recourse to venture capital. The latest to marry the new addresses are the British giant GlaxoSmithKline and the American Eli Lilly. Market conditions have imposed drastic choices: in particular, cutting the unprofitable time (on average a decade) between the conception of a drug and its testing on humans. GSK is entering into 10 super-contracts with academic centres: long-term agreements that cover the entire duration of potential product development. Science in exchange for money, but less than what would be spent on in-house research: and for the laboratories that sign the contracts, who are also struggling with funding cuts, the money from the multinationals is really useful. The earnings are proportionate to the future market performance of the drugs.
A contract of this kind was signed by GSK with Mark Pepis, a professor at University College London. The Pepis company Pentraxin Therapeutics sells the ideas with advance payment which it will then develop in close contact with the supervisors of the multinational (the therapeutic field is amyloidosis). Pepis says: «We discover the molecule and they develop it with their industrial know-how». Eli Lilly, on the other hand, is looking for 750 million dollars to be allocated to research: it has prepared 3 funds (in each of them it will put 50 million starting points) to be placed on the venture capital market for about twenty drugs to be developed. John Lechleiter, CEO of Eli Lilly explained: «We are no longer limited by internal resources and we can expand the scope of work». Even in Italy something is moving with the agreement between Cnr and Procter & Gamble. Thanks to a special internal company, Rete Ventures, the Cnr is trying to transfer scientific know-how to industry: in addition to spinoffs, the most used systems are the transfer of patents or the signing of contracts for joint research.
La Repubblica – Business & Finance Supplement – Andrea Rustichelli 
