Collaborative Innovation - The Results are in..

The top 5 collaborative innovators in biopharma are.....
Let’s begin with the fact that several companies consistently rank “top of the pops.” Three of the five companies with which biotech executives most want to partner this year – Roche, Genentech and Lilly – have featured high on the list since 2006, while a fourth – GlaxoSmithKline – has done so since 2008.

Moreover, these companies are not simply good at handling one aspect of biopartnering, be it deal sourcing, formation or management; on the contrary, they stand out in most other ways (see Figure 4). Roche has ranked among the top five companies in all but one category in one year. Lilly, GlaxoSmithKline and Genentech have also regularly appeared in the top five rankings, although Genentech has lately slipped down the ladder. It figures among this year’s most highly rated partners primarily because of its high ranking across other individual partnership drivers that were measured. These include its reputation for innovativeness, the caliber of its people and its strong commitment to partnering at senior management level.

The key question is what are these companies doing to lead the pack? To answer that question you should download the full report from this link

If your company wasn't in the top five and you want to know where you placed in this study then contact me at sthender@us.ibm.com and I will be happy to share the more detailed results with you.

2010 Biopartnering Study - The Results are in and there are some big suprises!

Our 2010 Biopartnering study is due to be launched early next month. This year's study has an important finding - companies that partner well – what we call "preferred partners" – are displaying stronger financial performance.

Compared to the rest, preferred partners:

• Averaged the highest return on invested capital – over 70% more than the least desirable partners
• Gained the most points in sales growth

In this year's report we include the full ranking and not just the top 5. There are some very surprising results. Where did your company come in the ranking?

For your early copy of the report please email me at sthender@us.ibm.com. Or Tiffany Yu at tiffany.yu@us.ibm.com

Roche and IBM Research target whole genome sequencing for $100 to $1000

The IBM Global Business Services Life Sciences Practice runs a biopartnering study every two years. Roche is consistently in the top 5 of that study and based on the announcement today one can see why.

I have discussed collaboratories in the past in this blog and their role in collaborative innovation. Today sees the announcement of one that will combine the respective talents of Roche and IBM.

This collaboration involves Roche's science, expertise and research and IBM's DNA Transistor (a novel nanopore-based sequencer technology). It has the potential improve sequencing throughput and reduce costs to achieve the vision of whole human genome sequencing at a cost of $100 to $1,000; down from the $20,000-$30,000 that is costs today.

Quick and reliable DNA sequencing could help Roche find patients that react best to specific drugs, helping reduce side-effects and drug development costs. The deal should accelerate Roche's understanding of diseases at a molecular level. One hopes that this can provide the insights that help identify drug targets, pathways and accelerate the development of healthcare solutions for the world's unmet medical needs.

Check out more on this youtube video link

Schematics of the DNA transistor operation for the control of the translocation of a DNA through a nanopor


A membrane containing the nanopore, funtionalized with metal contacts (orange) separated by dielectric materials (lime), devides a reservoir into a top part containing an ionic solution with a high concentration of single stranded DNA, and a bottom part, where the DNA will be translocated to. The DNA on the top reservoir is induced to go to the bottom reservoir by the action of a biasing voltage. In the absence of anything else, the DNA would translocate through the pore at a speed of several million bases per second. To control the passage of DNA trhough the nano-hole, voltages of appropriate polarity (not shown) are applied to the metal contacts inside the pore, which create an internal electric field that trap the DNA. By alternating the trapping voltages applied to the metal contacts, the DNA can be made ratchet from the top to the bottom reservoirs in a controlled way.

See the Press Release Below:
Roche and IBM Collaborate to Develop DNA Sequencing Technology

Collaboration aims to accelerate human genome analysis and enable advancements in personalized healthcare.

Roche (SIX: RO, ROG; OTCQX: RHHBY) and IBM (NYSE: IBM) announced today a partnership to develop a nanopore-based sequencer that will directly read and decode human DNA quickly and efficiently. Focused on advancing IBM’s recently published "DNA Transistor" technology, the collaboration will take advantage of IBM’s leadership in microelectronics, information technology and computational biology and Roche’s expertise in medical diagnostics and genome sequencing.

The novel technology, developed by IBM Research, offers true single molecule sequencing by decoding molecules of DNA as they are threaded through a nanometer-sized pore in a silicon chip. The approach holds the promise of significant advantages in cost, throughput, scalability, and speed compared to sequencing technologies currently available or in development.
"By merging computational biology, biotechnology, and nanotechnology skills, we are moving closer to producing a system that can quickly and accurately translate DNA into medically-relevant genetic information," said Ajay Royyuru, Senior Manager of the Computational Biology Department at IBM Research. "The challenge of all nanopore-based sequencing technologies is to slow and control the motion of the DNA through the nanopore. We are developing the technology to achieve this so that the reader can accurately decode the DNA sequence."

Ultimately, the technology has the potential improve throughput and reduce costs to achieve the vision of whole human genome sequencing at a cost of $100 to $1,000. Having access to an individual’s personal genetic code could advance the quality of medical care by identifying persons who will gain the greatest benefit from a particular medicine and those who are at most risk of adverse reaction.

"Sequencing is an increasingly critical tool for personalized healthcare. It can provide the individual genetic information necessary for the effective diagnosis and targeted treatment of diseases," explained Manfred Baier, Head of Roche Applied Science. "We are confident that this powerful technology - plus the combined strengths of IBM and Roche – will make low-cost whole genome sequencing and its benefits available to the marketplace faster than previously thought possible."

As part of the agreement, Roche will fund continued development of the technology at IBM and provide additional resources and expertise through collaboration with Roche’s sequencing subsidiary, 454 Life Sciences. Roche will develop and market all products based on the technology.

Roche’s investment in future genomic technologies builds upon the strength of its currently available 454 Sequencing Systems, which generate hundreds of thousands of long, high quality sequencing reads in hours. The technology is available for large-scale genomic analysis with the GS FLX System and for benchtop sequencing with the GS Junior System. Shown to provide significant medical value in targeted resequencing applications for virology and oncology research, 454 Sequencing Systems are poised to be first next-generation sequencing technology to move from the laboratory to the clinic.

For more information on 454 Sequencing Systems, visit http://www.454.com/.

About Roche
Headquartered in Basel, Switzerland, Roche is one of the world’s leading research-focused healthcare groups in the fields of pharmaceuticals and diagnostics. As the world’s biggest biotech company and an innovator of products and services for the early detection, prevention, diagnosis and treatment of diseases, the Group contributes on a broad range of fronts to improving people’s health and quality of life. Roche is the world leader in in-vitro diagnostics and drugs for cancer and transplantation, and is a market leader in virology. It is also active in other major therapeutic areas such as autoimmune diseases, inflammatory and metabolic disorders and diseases of the central nervous system. In 2008 sales by the Pharmaceuticals Division totaled 36.0 billion Swiss francs, and the Diagnostics Division posted sales of 9.7 billion francs. Roche has R&D agreements and strategic alliances with numerous partners, including majority ownership interests in Genentech and Chugai, and invested nearly 9 billion Swiss francs in R&D in 2008. Worldwide, the Group employs about 80,000 people. Additional information is available on the Internet at http://www.roche.com/.

About IBM
For more information, visit www.ibm.com/smarterplanet

The 2010 CEO Study - Life Sciences Edition

This study is the fourth edition of IBM's biennial Global CEO Study series. It includes a specific analysis of the Life Sciences industry. Link to the study here

To better understand the challenges and goals of today's CEOs, IBM consultants met face-to-face with the largest-known sample of these executives. Between September 2009 and January 2010, IBM interviewed 1,541 CEOs, general managers, and senior public sector leaders who represent different sizes of organizations in 60 countries and 33 industries. This group included 76 Life Sciences CEOs based in 21 countries.

These conversations offer valuable insight into the agendas and actions of global leaders.

The analysis includes connecting the performance of the companies with the actions of these CEOs. Certain organizations have delivered solid business results even in the recent economic downturn – and the people who lead them feel much more prepared for complexity ahead.

So, what are these "Standouts" doing to thrive? Our extensive analysis shows that CEOs leading standout companies are capitalizing on complexity to:

• embody creative leadership,
• reinvent customer relationships; and
• build operating dexterity.

The study is well worth reading and I will blog more on some of the key analysis in coming weeks. I will leave you with one difference to digest now though.

Life Sciences CEOs are even more likely than Standouts to favor quick decisions. In fact 48% more likely than the standout CEOs. Only 8% of Life Sciences CEOs favored thorough decisions alone as a style. I am keen to hear your thoughts on this finding.

Decision Style:

Smarter products in the home: The future of wellness devices

Biopharma companies are looking beyond launching drugs to launching solutions. Solutions include the use of devices and programs with the drug. Whether it is ideas such as J&J's iPhone app for diabetics or simple glucose monitors it is clear that probability of achieving the health outcome can be improved significantly.

To understand consumer experiences with and expectations around the “wellness devices,” IBM’s Institute for Business Value surveyed over 1300 consumers most likely to be familiar with such devices: people who are living with chronic illnesses or who are caregivers. The survey was conducted in both the U.S. and U.K., yielding views of consumers who access different types of health systems.

The study is not published yet though.. it will be launched at a webcast on April 21, 2010 9:00 am - 10:30 am EDT. You can register for this webcast through this link.



The webcast will share:

1. What types of wellness devices are being used today?
2. What types of wellness devices would consumers like to see, and how much are they willing to pay for them?
3. What factors influence consumers’ device selection?

Diabetes Epidemic in Emerging Markets

The strategies of the largest biopharma companies have been adding focus to emerging markets for some time now. The NEJM published a paper today showing exactly why the focus is critical to the health of the population in those markets.

The researchers from the China National Diabetes and Metabolic Disorders Study Group conducted a national study from June 2007 through May 2008 to estimate the prevalence of diabetes among Chinese adults. The results are staggering.

Their research suggests that China has around 92 million diabetics. This double what the International Diabetes Federation has estimated. Furthermore it is significantly more than India which is estimated to be at 50 million today. A conservative estimate of $440 (USD) per annum to treat a diabetic would suggest that the Chinese market opportunity today is over $40BN (1% of 2009 China GDP) and when one includes India a $60BN market. To get some perspective on that market size one needs to consider that in 2007, the diabetes treatment market worldwide was worth in the region of $25 billion.

Success in addressing this pandemic will be the challenge of biopharma companies and healthcare organizations around the world. What remains unclear is how we will find the funds to provide for this exploding need for healthcare.


You can read the paper here


The following graphic is sourced from bbc.co.uk

Collaboration of 1.5 Million computers in 80 countries has discovered two new compounds that prove the existence of new binding sites on HIV protease

A team of researchers at the renowned Scripps Research Institute has discovered two new compounds that prove the existence of new binding sites on HIV protease. Associate Professor C. David Stout, senior author of the study, explained “These results open the door to a whole new approach to drug design against HIV protease,” which is an enzyme used by HIV to create new, infectious viral particles.



Two members of the FightAIDS@Home team, Research Associate Alex L. Perryman, Ph.D., and Professor Arthur J. Olson, were part of this innovative research and are now working to extend it. This experimental breakthrough will serve as the basis for new drug development to combat the increasing number of drug-resistant HIV strains and to improve the potency of current drug therapies. The results form the groundwork for a new class of more powerful treatments to fight HIV/AIDS. The findings appear as the March cover story in the journal Chemical Biology and Drug Design.

Utilizing computing power from 1.5 million devices networked through IBM’s World Community Grid, the new sites on the HIV protease are being used as docking targets for virtual screening experiments, in order to guide the development of these chemical compounds into a new class of potent HIV inhibitors. Using the massive computational resources of the World Community Grid, the FightAIDS@Home team has already docked over 500,000 compounds against these newly characterized binding sites.

By aggregating the unused cycle time of 1.5 million personal computers donated by volunteers in over 80 countries, World Community Grid is now the world’s largest public humanitarian grid, equivalent in power to a Top 15 supercomputer, and crunched more than 107,000 years of computational time in just 5 years for the Scripps Research Institute project, providing more than 104 million calculations.

“IBM’s World Community Grid and its volunteers help us run millions of computations to evaluate the potential interactions between compounds and mutant viral proteins,” said Dr. Arthur J. Olson, Anderson Research Chair Professor, Department of Molecular Biology at The Scripps Research Institute. “Through this effort we were able to significantly speed up our investigation. Without the computational power of World Community Grid, it would have taken us many more years to get to this important step in our research.”

Once the HIV virus enters a human cell, it uses a small set of proteins called enzymes to force the cell to produce many new copies of itself, which then go on to infect other cells. Most HIV drugs work by blocking the operation of one or more of these enzymes. In the current work, the Scripps researchers are looking for new compounds that will stabilize the inhibited conformation, or shape, of the HIV protease enzyme, and thus help stop the virus from replicating. Because HIV mutates so frequently, some drugs that inhibit the enzyme from replicating are no longer working, or are not working as effectively. By running calculations on the World Community Grid FightAIDS@Home project, the team at Scripps is trying to develop new drugs that bind to more parts of the mutant enzyme, thereby shutting it down more effectively.

The glue between Partners & Alliances - 2010 Biopartnering Study

We are in the process of developing our BioPartnering 2010 study. The study examines three areas:

1. Deal Sourcing: - Proactively sourcing for the best deals and enabling prospective partners to easily access the pharma company; building a reputation for being a “Partner of Choice”
2. Deal Making: - Trust building, due diligence, valuation, negotiation and contracting
3. Alliance Management: - Realizing value through the creation and execution of an alliance business plan, organization and governance arrangements

The study surveys companies in the biopharma industry and delivers three tangible outputs:

• Fresh thinking - every study builds on the last and new insights are derived every time we run this. One key area of focus is always on what did "outperformers" do that the "underperformers" did not.
• Scoring for Companies that participate in the study - Top 5 rankings for each of the three areas we study (Merck and Genentech were the only companies in the 2008 study that made top 5 ranking for all three areas).
• Drivers of Alliance Formation - Understanding what motivates interest in a deal. The "Deal on offer", not suprisingly, is the most important; however what else drives the deal?

In preparation for this year's study I have been doing some research and took time to read Stefan Lindegaard's blog. In his most recent posting he responds to an open innovation posting from John Hagel and John Seely Brown. The nugget I really caught onto was at the end of his posting.

He refers to a talk given by Peter Erickson who leads the innovation efforts at General Mills. General Mills have been leaders in the open innovation field along with companies such as P&G (Connect & Develop) and IBM. He writes in his blog "The next practices of open innovation will be about developing systems, enablers, and processes that speed the connection to innovation partners in a repeatable, cost effective, quick way".

Open innovation is not a new practice. In fact Professor Chesbrough first coined the term back in 2003. So my hypothesis is that outperformers in the biopharma industry have mature processes and systems for the operation of their alliances and collaborations.... not just the scouting and deal making aspects.

Therefore in the 2010 study we will aim to evaluate this hypothesis; we will examine the maturity of systems, enablers and processes and see if they are at a level where one could describe them as "repeatable, cost effective, and fast"?

Check out the 2008 study titled "A Marriage of Minds" and a related publication "The Power of Many" to understand the ABCs of collaboration.

Innovation - New Life Sciences Collaboratory from IBM

I have been a fan of the collaboratory model since I first learned of it. However I wasn't able to really share a life sciences example. Until this week. IBM, the University of Melbourne and the Victorian government today announced a new IBM Research Collaboratory for Life Sciences, located in Melbourne, Australia. The collaboratory is IBM’s first life sciences collaboratory, and IBM’s first collaboratory in the southern hemisphere. It will use high-performance computing – including IBM’s BlueGene super computer – to advance biological sciences and medical research.

Collaboratory Goals
The collaboration is dedicated to dramatic improvements in human health through technology innovation in medical diagnostics, drug discovery and drug design, underpinned by a deep understanding of disease. The collaboratory will use data and high-performance computing to model biological systems in order to accelerate research and treatments for conditions such as cancer and neurological disease.

Scientists from VLSCI and IBM Research will work to accelerate the translation of our fundamental understanding of biology to improvements in medical care and health outcomes, with projects such as:

• Medical Imaging and Neuroscience: high performance computers are used to analyse images from the devices such as MRI, PET and the synchrotron.
• Clinical Genomics: the identification of combinations of genes implicated in disease and the ability to predict susceptibility to disease and treatment outcome from an individual’s genome and medical history.
• Structural Biology: understanding the structure and shape of biological macromolecules, fundamental to pharmaceutical discovery.
• Integrated Systems Biology: understanding and modelling the dynamic behaviour of complex systems, from genes, proteins, cells, tissues and organs to organisms.

What is the bottom line?

By bringing computation to medical research, breakthroughs in diagnosis and treatment can be achieved much quicker. What may have taken two years or more using traditional computational and wet laboratory techniques can be achieved in a matter of days or weeks.

See more on this youtube video....

Great Articles to start the year off

Nature magazine ended the year with a great article from Bernard Munos of Lilly. His retrospective look at 60 years of innovation in the industry crunches a ton of data and provides some support for beliefs held by many Industry Leaders as well as numerous new perspectives.

The article is titled "Lessons from 60 years of pharmaceutical innovation" . I highly recommend it! (more from Bernard on youtube speaking at the CIP Forum in September 2009 - link here)

The second is also from Nature... 2020 Visions. Gary Pisano (Harvard Business School Professor and author of Science Business) put some pithy views together in an easy read that stimulates the grey matter.

Enjoy and Happy New Year!