By Elisabeth Goodman(1)
As a member of One Nucleus, I had the opportunity to join about 200 delegates from a mixture of Biotech, CRO, Biopharm, Technology, IT, Government, Academic and Business Consulting organisations at an open evening at GlaxoSmithKline’s Stevenage site on Wednesday 8th June, 2011
After an opening address by One Nucleus’s CEO, Harriet Fear, we heard a series of presentations by Damien McDevitt on GSK’s Business Development teams, Nicki Thompson on the Alternative Discovery and Development Group (for virtual and externalized drug discovery), Declan Jones on the Centre of Excellence for External Drug Discovery (Ceedd), Adrian Pritchard on Scinovo (for collaborative drug discovery and development). We also had some closing remards from Nicki Thompson, and a very brief introduction to Martino Picardo – CEO of Stevenage BioCatalyst.
The evening was rounded-off by up to 2 hours of networking amongst delegates, speakers, and other members of GSK who were present for the event.
As Damien McDevitt explained, with 70% of its current late stage pipeline being in-licensed, GSK’s ‘working in partnership’ model is about exploring opportunities for creative deal making with external partners.
Nicki Thompson spoke about how GSK has been moving from the Pharmaceutical model of centralized control and management, heavily reliant on internal resources, to a de-centralised ‘virtualisation’ of drug discovery (and development) relying more on external resources.
Declan Jones said that GSK are looking for companies with strong management teams, a leading position in a specific technology or therapeutic area based on first class science, and more!
Adrian Pritchard explained how Scinovo provides scientific consulting and advisory support from early discovery research, through non-clinical, and clinical development. They have hubs of experts in Hertfordshire, UK, on the East Coast of North America, and in Shanghai, acting as account executives, scientific consultants, and outsourcing managers working with global CRO / CMO suppliers. Access to Scinovo can be via the Alternative Discovery and Development Group (e.g. the Ceedd within it), through the Stevenage Bioscience Catalyst group, or directly.
All in all, an excellent opportunity to hear an update on GSK’s approach to working in partnership with external organisations, and to meet and network with others looking to participate in such partnerships.
Notes
- Elisabeth Goodman is Owner and Principal Consultant at RiverRhee Consulting– a Business Consultancy that helps business teams to enhance team effectiveness for greater productivity and improved team morale. She is also Co-Founder and Principal Consultant at OI Pharma Partners helping the Pharmaceutical industry, academia and the public sector use Open Innovation to accelerate drug development and leverage the power of underutilised Intellectual Property.
Elisabeth – thanks for posting the summary. As well as reducing duplication of efforts and resources on our respective member companies, one of the aims when we merged LBN and ERBI was to enhance the way in which we interacted with our members’ key targets – be that Pharma, major US clusters or investors. This event is a result of some of that planning and progress we have made and the generosity of GSK to host such an event which we know many of our members found valuable.
Thank you for your comment Tony, and this event certainly seems to have met your objectives as you state them.