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Transformational Disruption in the Pharmaceutical Industry
Dr. Jeffrey Leiden Speaks on Industry Trends and Implications for Investors
Jonathan Wyler (OC), Contributing Writer
Issue date: 2/19/08 Section: News
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As a result of the changing landscape in the pharmaceutical industry, Leiden expects that there will be considerable consolidation and restructuring within the industry, a decline in U.S. leadership as biotechnology and pharmaceutical activity is rapidly growing in other regions, and as a result the need for large pharma companies to develop new drug development strategies.
On Tuesday, January 29, Dr. Jeffrey Leiden, M.D., Ph.D. of Clarus Ventures addressed a group of some fifty MBA students on the topic of major changes in the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries. This event marks the latest in a series of speaker events hosted by the Healthcare Club featuring a variety of high-profile leaders in the healthcare industry.
Dr. Leiden brought a broad range of perspectives to his presentation as a cardiologist, researcher, Harvard professor, serial biotech entrepreneur, former President and COO of Abbott Laboratories, and currently a Managing Partner at Cambridge-based life sciences venture capital firm, Clarus Ventures.
Leiden started the discussion by outlining the tremendous success of the pharmaceutical industry over the past century, including such examples as reducing the mortality rate of congestive heart failure by 50% over the past quarter century and reducing the mortality rate for HIV/AIDS by some 75% in just the past decade. However, he now sees the industry starting to go through substantial changes with major declines in R&D productivity and declining NIH research funding, increasingly conservative FDA responses, price pressures, foreign patent threats, and the growth of the generics segment. Despite a massive increase in R&D spending, the number of approved new molecular entities (NMEs) has declined by half over the past decade, particularly with biotech playing an increasingly more prominent role among approved drugs.
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