We need to understand in depth all biological disease data

Formerly, the pharmaceutical industry discovered 80 of new molecules, 20 in the academic community. Today, this is exactly the opposite. "Jacky Vonderscher, Director of translational research at Roche, announces the color without hesitation:"Now we are more developers than of discoverers." "The new R & D organization that is in place in fact pharmaceutical groups now widely appeal to external expertise. Nothing in France, the Swiss Roche already announced 20 agreements with institutions medical public or parastatal as the Institute Gustave - Roussy (rig), the Institut Curie and the francophone thoracic cancer Intergroup (IFCT). In February, Sanofi-Aventis signed a five year partnership with the Alliance for the science of life and health (Aviesan) to "advance scientific knowledge in the field of health."

Last month, the US FDA, the network of 27 public health (NIH) research institutes and several local industry including Amgen, Abbott and Pfizer have launched I-Spy2 biomarkers consortium. Objective: to develop joint future diagnostics to identify genetic mutations responsible for the different types of cancers. Same sound of a Bell in a smaller player in the sector, the French group Ipsen. "Type public-private collaborations are essential for pre-competitive research," said Claude Bertrand, "chief scientific officer" of the group.

Small reactive teams

Currently, the industrial research budgets oscillate between 15 and 20 of the turnover. But despite these astronomical amounts (read above), the machine to innovate internal no longer fulfills its function. Results, the power of R & D, formerly busy hives that employed thousands of researchers on a huge campus, are in the interest of managers. Place the small agile and responsive teams who work with contracts limited in time. Currently, nearly 5,000 molecules are in development around the world, including about 800 in cancer, and no one has really means to understand the functioning of a cell in its entirety. Since the sequencing of the human genome in 2001, the field of biological knowledge has truly exploded, checking the old adage of Henri Poincaré: "whenever it widens the circle of light, increases around the shadow circle." In other words, more is discovered and more remains to be discovered.

"The knowledge holders."

This aphorism is the matter of researchers and the academic "knowledge holders" institutes who are wooed of any part "change of strategy of the industry is a finding of failure." We are suppliers of patients. "We réapproprions us clinical trials phase I", summarizes the Professor Jean-Charles Soria, oncologist specialist for advanced therapies at the Institut Gustave-Roussy in Villejuif, near Paris. A total culture change for French researchers, not always familiar with the constraints of industrial research where the scientific publication and patent filing are rarely good housekeeping. "In the US, this attitude is spontaneous." "In France, less than 35 researchers more readily accept this principle", note the Scientific Director of the Institut Curie, Daniel Louvard.

The mysteries of life, the pharmaceutical industry has three competing channels: the internal research, collaboration with the University fabric and the redemption of SMEs inventive. But then the two last were obviously the wind, the first to clearly lead in the wing. The choice of priorities and the part to be given to research in "subcontracting" are far from simple. The CEO of AstraZeneca, David Brenan, recently summarized the situation of a sentence: "need to find the balance point and retain enough researchers at home for many assess the quality of outsourced projects. Moreover, the sector continues to extensively its market in the biotechnology start-up (read below).

This redistribution of tasks raises many problems, which the most important is the management of intellectual property. "This requires us to strengthen our legal services", said Jean-Charles Soria. In France, industrial appreciate too the timeshare, frequent in hexagonal University research, for an obvious reason: the more there are actors in a contract, over the signing of an agreement is complicated.

No complex

Curie, researchers are interchangeably from CNRS, Inserm, or pastor. "But we offer a single interlocutor to negotiate with the industry," said Damien Salauze, Director of the division of the patent and industrial partnerships.

To deal with these applications in development, the Institute of the montagne Sainte-Geneviève did not hesitate to hire two veterans of the industry. With Damien Salauze, Sergio Roman-Roman, in charge of clinical trials, displays no complex to industrialists. "It is we who decide to try such molecule for therapeutic interest."

While welcoming these partnerships, Parisian centre remaining very attentive to its independence. "It is out of the question that we are becoming service providers," says Daniel Louvard. Will this model become the next producer jackpot of tens of new treatments Countercurrent of the mode of "outsourcing", the American Amgen, leader of Biologics, seems alone. "We need to understand in depth all biological disease data." "Basic research is absolutely vital for us," judge Willard Dere, senior Vice President of medical research of the California group.