Pharma "Missing Breakthrough Research Opportunities"

“Throwing unrestricted funds at academia’s best-known research centers is a symptom of low creativity in pharma R&D,” writes Frank David in this week’s Forbes.    Harvard, Rockefeller, Stanford, UCSF, and Yale are of course eminently worthy of collaboration, says David, but “pharma is missing many breakthrough research opportunities by ignoring the rest of the pack”.   Among the reasons he cites for this are 1. scientific talent is diffuse - there’s a surplus of excellent biomedical researchers in academia; 2. the “capabilities gap” has narrowed between top-tier centers and the rest; and 3. pharma has an unrealized “contrarian opportunity” in R&D partnerships - “you’re unlikely to gain any advantage by following the herd”.   “To get a competitive edge, pharma needs to fish in less-crowded waters,” adds David.   For more on this piece, click here.