What we do
Our R&D clients include major pharmaceutical companies, medical device manufacturers, biotechs, and clinical research organizations. Our work, which spans all major therapeutic areas, focuses on:
- Driving innovation: We can help transform a company’s corporate culture and R&D infrastructure to meet changing industry needs, or support efforts to attract, motivate, and mobilize the best talent. We use our insights to help companies develop innovative products that offer substantial benefits over existing therapies, allowing them to overcome hurdles to regulatory approval and payor reimbursement.
- Improving productivity and performance: We have multiple strategies for enhancing client’s productivity and performance. For instance, we can help them access new technologies and innovation through various R&D financing and partnership models that minimize cost and risk. We also facilitate approval and reduce development timelines and costs by helping design clinical strategies that maximize the chance for a successful approval with the best possible label. Our efforts often involve assisting companies with organizational issues (e.g., helping them determine the most efficient structure post-merger, etc.). Since we understand the changing vendor landscape and we offer global reach and expertise, we can also assist companies in identifying the right outsourcing/off-shoring opportunities and in capturing greater value from emerging markets.
- Developing successful portfolio and asset strategies: For resource allocation, we help clients allocate their clinical research budgets and focus on the most promising products. With existing drugs and devices, we show clients which therapy areas, diseases, or products should receive priority. Most importantly, we apply novel approaches to maximize the value creation potential of each individual pipeline asset. For instance, we can help clients identify compounds that will provide more value in established markets or generate demand in rapidly growing emerging markets. We also help clients identify and execute business development opportunities, including in- and out-licensing deals, mergers and acquisitions, joint ventures, and innovative multi-party transactions that improve productivity.
Recent examples of our work
- We supported a top ten pharmaceutical company in a multi-year R&D operating model transformation effort which allowed it to become one of the most innovative drug development organizations worldwide.
- We helped a pharmaceutical company create new metrics for early development, significantly increasing the number of oncology products emerging through the pipeline.
- We assisted a large pharmaceutical company in a PMM situation to integrate newly acquired R&D units and shape the R&D strategy of the new organization.
- We helped a pharmaceutical company re-design two clinical programs and develop a new regulatory strategy, saving hundreds of millions and reducing the development timeline by more than three years.
- We helped a large pharmaceutical company in reviewing its product development, R&D sourcing and market access strategies in both established and emerging markets.
- We supported a pharmaceutical company in introducing adaptive trials (in which the study design is periodically modified based on interim results), resulting in $50 million in annual savings, improved patient safety, and reduced cycle times.
- We helped a biotech company design clinical trials that allowed it to obtain novel labeling options , increasing potential sales by 20 percent.
- We assisted a pharmaceutical company in achieving run-rate savings of approximately $70 million.
- We suggested that a pharmaceutical company reduce its focus from about 30 disease areas to 10 and concentrate on products for which it had acompetitive advantage, optimizing resource allocation.
- We developed asset optimization strategies for more than 30 assets in phase II or III clinical studies.
- We helped a pharmaceutical company apply novel trial designs to early clinical studies, resulting in estimated savings of $20 million for each phase IIa program.
- We helped a biotech reduce the number of protocol amendments in its clinical trials by 10 percent, lowering annual trial execution costs by about $50 million.
- We helped a large pharmaceutical company with a complex organization clarify roles, responsibilities, and accountability, resulting in potentially tens of millions of dollars in savings.
Proprietary tools and insights
We have developed tools to help our clients extract maximum value from their R&D investments. Examples include:
- SuccessLab, which benchmarks performance and helps research-driven companies improve R&D productivity in the labs
- Clinical Trial Impact, a diagnostic and decision-making tool that identifies and prioritizes opportunities to improve clinical operations
- MAPES, a comprehensive, annual evaluation system launched across a consortium of pharmaceutical companies to deliver value in Medical Affairs
Forging Connections
We regularly convene industry conferences on R&D issues. A few examples:
- The IMPACT Global Clinical Operations Conference, which allows heads of clinical development or operations to discuss best practices and emerging trends related to a wide range of topics, including trial design, patient recruitment, patient monitoring, and outsourcing
- The R&D Leadership Development Forum, which helps rising executives at pharmaceutical and biotech companies network and share their perspectives
- The Winning Innovations conference, which allows senior R&D leaders across industries to discuss pressing industry topics related to innovation, such strategies for working with multiple collaborators and competitors to develop better products
- We also frequently give R&D presentations at investor meetings and industry-sponsored conferences.