Ending the Pharma Relay Race with a Non-Opioid Breakthrough

To develop Journavx, Vertex abandoned a baton-pass approach of handoffs between departments in favor of one that places R&D and commercial teams in close proximity beginning early in the development process.

The drug development process within life sciences has always functioned as a relay race. Research makes the discovery, development carries it through clinical trials, then commercial takes the baton for the final sprint to the patient. But this fragmented approach has created structural inefficiencies that drive up R&D costs while failing to deliver truly transformative medicines.

Chase Feiger, M.D., Co-Founder and CEO of Veeva Ostro, and Jeffrey Leiden, M.D., Ph.D., Executive Chairman and former CEO of Vertex Pharmaceuticals, sat down with Pharmaceutical Executive to discuss the genesis of Journavx, the end of the developmental relay race, and the shift toward a more disciplined, integrated model of innovation.

Pharmaceutical Executive: Why did Vertex abandon the relay-race model, where one department handles a project and then passes it to the next, for the development of Journavx?
Leiden: To fix the innovation failure in many therapeutic areas, we reasoned that we had to move away from volume to focus instead on fewer high-probability candidates. At Vertex, we didn’t just throw more R&D projects at the wall. We focused on a very specific validated target: the NaV1.8 sodium channel. By targeting these gates in the peripheral nervous system, we could stop pain signals before they ever reach the brain. This required a level of disciplined execution and a nearly 20-year commitment that a traditional relay model can’t sustain.

Journavx is an example where a totally new non-opioid way of treating pain was not just an R&D challenge. Vertex had to align this development to regulatory, manufacturing, safety, and commercial. All functions needed to be engaged early and continuously. Slowing down a category-defining launch with workarounds based on years of disconnected choices was not an option.

PE: Why is that model becoming obsolete?
Feiger: Today, the complexity of the biology requires a level of continuity that silos can’t provide. When you treat R&D and commercialization as isolated legs of a race, you lose the vital signal of the patient’s needs, not to mention the nuances of the underlying science. The more-shots-on-goal approach to drug development was premised on the assumption that, if you fund enough programs and advance enough candidates, sheer volume would eventually improve the odds of success. In reality, it led to the industry funding a loose collection of scientific bets, which drove up costs without delivering a higher number of successes.

PE: Have life sciences companies adjusted their development and commercialization strategies in response?
Feiger: Yes. The big change is that people want answers to questions immediately, whether the question is from the development team or the patient. With teams no longer waiting for the baton to be passed and running the entire race as a single, coordinated unit, questions are answered as you are going through approvals.This level of synchronization is the way to navigate the increasing regulatory and therapeutic complexities of drug development in order to produce truly transformative medicines for serious diseases.

The change in commercial initiates from this behavior shift. We know that patients and HCPs communicate differently now. A patient is not going to read through pages of content about their medication; they are going to ask a question in their own way at the time that it comes to them. Ostro was created to answer those patient questions with validated scientific content.

PE: What is the potential industry impact of ending the traditional shots-on-goal, linear-handoffs approach?
Leiden: It allows us to solve problems that were previously considered unsolvable and to produce medicines that cure or fundamentally modify the course of serious diseases. When you have a disciplined model built around validated biology and tight execution, you aren't just bringing a new product to market. You are shifting a structural mindset of prioritizing numbers in the pipeline because of the traditionally high failure rates.

Feiger: Ultimately, the phasing out of the pass-the-baton approach is about moving from a race for volume to a race for focused innovation. It means the medicines reaching the market are more precise, and the time it takes to go from discovery to patient use can be significantly reduced.