Alliances Key Ingredient in Novartis Pipeline Plan By Kevin Davies
January 22, 2007 | DELRAY BEACH, FLORIDA -- Jeremy Levin, global head of strategic alliances at the Novartis Institutes for Biomedical Research (NIBR), said his primary motivation in finding partners and striking deals to boost the big pharma’s drug pipeline is to help suffering.
“As a physician, I’ve had tens of patients die under my hand,” Levin told delegates at CHI’s annual Pharmaceutical and Biotechnology Leaders Summit last week. “To watch little kids die is just not nice.” Nor, he added, did he care much for aging. But reducing mortality and morbidity depends both on new medicines and a different lifestyle, as evidenced by impressive reductions in mortality in heart disease and cancer.
Like all big pharma companies, Novartis faces rising costs, compound attrition, and a dearth of novel drug targets. Trying to overcome these problems is exciting, Levin said, but as for the underlying reasons, “I haven’t heard a coherent answer.”
Some big pharma companies have responded by reshaping R&D. “Those are the companies that are going to win,” said Levin. Licensing deals totaled $13.5 billion last year, with increasing focus on early-stage compounds. But Levin observed that over the past 18 months, most of his potential partnering conversations have taken a turn, ending in, “Would you like to buy us?”
Novartis has 3500 researchers worldwide, with 1300 based in its Cambridge, Mass., headquarters, including the newly relocated vaccine division. Levin said the blend of scientists is ideal, with academics (36 percent), biotech (41 percent) and pharma (23 percent). Moreover, the company recently opened a new facility in Shanghai.
Novartis’ main research goal has been to build a new ‘grammar’ for organizing the genetic and chemical universes towards drug discovery. The company is forging new ways to discover and validate targets, using siRNA, antibodies, proteins, predictive animal models, and better ways to stratify patients. But newly identified targets must be placed in the context of molecular pathways, Levin said.
Levin, who was CEO of Physiome (an early in silico company) before joining NIBR, said Novartis maintains “a rich interest in in silico biology.” Many of the key modelers on his former Physiome team have joined Novartis, which is also collaborating with Entelos.
Partnering with a company and a key person can be phenomenally productive, said Levin. A good example is the mTOR pathway, which was championed by a partner and turns out to be relevant in half-a-dozen diseases, from tuberous sclerosis and retinitis pigmentosa to cancer. A long-standing partnership with MorphoSys has introduced antibodies into the mix, which now make up one-third of the pipeline.
Levin also showed how study of a relatively rare genetic disorder could pay dividends for treating much more common diseases. There are only 10,000 patients with Muckle-Wells inflammatory syndrome, who can be treated with one antibody injection roughly every nine months. Levin hailed this as a tremendous proof of concept. “Can we expand that to complex heterogeneous diseases?” Levin asked rhetorically. Novartis is eyeing a huge market opportunity in treating patients with arthritis, psoriasis, asthma, and type 1 diabetes, among others.
World Traveler
Levin’s alliance team speaks a total of 15 languages, which come in handy as the search for new chemical technologies takes them around the world, particularly into Eastern Europe. The partnership with Alnylam is paying dividends in the siRNA field, which Levin is confidant will result in new therapeutics.
The problem with “one-way street deals,” according to Levin, was that Novartis never learned when they failed. “What you can learn from a failed collaboration is crucial,” he said. “There’s no such thing as a failed collaboration.” But partnerships could break apart. Danger signs include a failure to define project expectations, a drift in strategy, poor leadership, a reluctance to commit resources -- and sometimes, downright greed.
http://www.bio-itworld.com/newsitems/2007/01-22-07-jeremy-levin
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