Chapter 35. Pharmaceutical productivity — the imperative for new paradigms

Publisher Summary This chapter focuses on pharmaceutical productivity and explores new paradigms for it. Despite dramatic increases in R&D investment, the promise of the genomics revolution, and the remarkable array of new technical tools available to the discovery scientist, the record of industry productivity over the past decade as measured by drug approvals has declined. During this same period, the unpredicted rise of blockbusters and mega-blockbusters, a direct result of improved R&D/Marketing partnerships, has driven unprecedented revenue expansions, while the vigor of the generic industry has placed an exclamation point on sustainability. To maintain biopharmaceutical industry prospects for sustained growth and to meet the palpable healthcare needs of a global and aging population, increases in productivity on the order of 2 to 4-fold are required. The chapter focuses on the core issues of the biopharmaceutical industry, including new assemblies of technology, different organizational concepts best suited to the creation of a breakthrough in R&D productivity, etc. It also describes the concept of expanding the number of high confidence-in-rationale targets and discusses the central role of chemistry and chemical diversity based approaches.