push forward each project, Gutierrez-Ramos says. The teams will also be able to lean on Pfizer’s global network of people who know how to synthesize drug candidates, and run animal tests. The Pfizer innovation centers will be evaluated based on whether they can get these “proof of mechanism” questions answered on time, in three years, instead of the usual 10 years it takes now, Gutierrez-Ramos.
“The goal when we get together with an investigator is only one,” Gutierrez-Ramos says. “To try to demonstrate that we might have a new medicine.”
If a project shows promise, then Pfizer has the option to license in the program for its internal R&D, and go off to the races through the usual series of clinical trials needed for FDA approval. But if the biological mechanism is outside Pfizer’s development portfolio, or looks too risky, then the intellectual property reverts back to the academic institution. The university can then license it out to another company, or use it to form a new startup. When the project goes back to the academic institution, which Gutierrez-Ramos says should happen quite often, Pfizer will retain the right to co-invest along with VCs.
This is clearly a new way of doing business between pharma and academia. One former dealmaker there told me that in the old days, Pfizer would rather let drug candidates sit on its shelf than let them go back to a university, and end up potentially doing something good in another company’s pipeline. One venture capitalist told me he’s hopeful that it could help stir more entrepreneurial spirit in academic medicine, if investigators can gain confidence in the bushwhackers who are working on their behalf in a big company with multiple layers like Pfizer.
The odds would almost surely say this effort is doomed to fail. The organizations have different goals, in that academia wants to advance knowledge, and pharma wants to make money. Pharma companies have been known to try to censor or heavily edit academic publications that cast a negative light on their products—a major source of tension and distrust in academia. Most academics and most people inside Big Pharma aren’t entrepreneurs with the monomaniacal focus and drive that comes from not knowing if you can make payroll next month. There are cultural and personal differences too, in which academics sometimes look at businesspeople as overpaid hacks, and businesspeople see academics as undisciplined spoiled brats who have no clue about drug development.
The main enemy Gutierrez-Ramos sees is cultural inertia, i.e., the old way of doing business. The CTIs need to be staffed with the very best people to pull this off, he says. Trusting, professional relationships need to be forged on both sides. That sort of trust doesn’t get built overnight, and can be lost in a heartbeat.
There’s no doubt that Gutierrez-Ramos is a thoughtful guy, and knows he needs a potent motivating force to counteract all the negative vibes that could drag this down. He told me last week that he wants academics to feel like they’ve won the “lottery” and signed up for a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to see if they can prove whether their ideas are right.
Pfizer, of course, needs lots of big new drugs to keep its business going in its current form, and it’s not finding enough of them from its internal R&D. In a worst case scenario, Pfizer flushes a few hundred million dollars down the tubes, which isn’t much for a company with an $8 billion annual R&D budget. But if it does work, Pfizer expects it could get 20 to 30 percent of its R&D done through these academic collaborations, Gutierrez-Ramos says.
It also could establish a new template for other companies, and other academic centers, to do a better job of taking drugs all the way from early research through development. If that happens, it could revitalize the whole creaky engine of pharma R&D, which would be good for more than just Pfizer.
“My responsibility is to make sure Pfizer improves the quality of the medicines going forward in our pipeline,” Gutierrez-Ramos says. “But unless we increase the overall level of biomedical research, then Pfizer as a whole can’t win.”
