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Fixing What Ails the Drug Industry
Topics: Communication-ConferencesCommunication-ConferencesResearch-GeneralHealth-Health Care and TreatmentInnovation-Collaborative InnovationIn 2008, private investors and the National Institutes of Health plowed more than $100 billion into pharmaceutical research. And yet, “We’re not seeing the new diagnostics, treatments, preventative approaches, and cures that we might have expected,” FDA commissioner Margaret Hamburg told attendees at the 11th HBS Health Industry Alumni Association Conference. She joined Eli Lilly CEO John Lechleiter in addressing the November 4–6 event, titled “The Future of Therapy from the Leaders Who Create It.”
So what’s the cure for the ailing pharmaceutical industry?
The answer, said Hamburg in her presentation to upwards of 280 HBS alumni who gathered on the Harvard Medical School campus, is better regulatory science. That translates into faster decision-making and a better balance between safety and innovation with respect to drugs, food, and other regulated products, she explained.
Lechleiter echoed Hamburg’s call for improvements in regulation, but he also emphasized the innovation side of the balancing act between safety and product development. “Reinvent invention,” he told the audience. The industry must get smarter about developing drugs nimbly; creating partnerships, including ones with academia; and sharing pre-competitive research, Lechleiter said. He made a plea for federal and state policy support in the form of tax incentives and improvements to the U.S. education system to back up industry action.
Conference panelists also touched repeatedly on the idea of personalized medicine, which targets individuals with shared traits. Identifying such traits would be good for both patients and the pharmaceutical industry.
—Sarah Auerbach
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