Goldman readies investment pool for drug R&D

Goldman Sachs says it is ready to start funneling hundreds of millions of dollars into a new 'hybrid' R&D model that will be used to advance early and mid-stage drugs in the biopharma pipeline. Jon Symonds, the managing director for Goldman in London and the former finance director of AstraZeneca, says pharma companies will be able to assign early-stage programs to an R&D pool overseen by a group of financial experts, scientists and CROs, according to a report in the Financial Times. This new research model would both share the risk of drug development as well as cut the costs associated with R&D--an enormous expense and frustration for a slate of pharma companies that have had little to boast about in recent years.

This investment vehicle represents a bold departure for pharma companies, which traditionally have financed R&D from a rich stream of drug revenue. But Symonds notes that the current economic crisis has made it imperative to find fresh sources of capital to back development at a time when many pharma companies are "trapped" in expensive late-stage trials with little left over to back early stage research programs.

- read the story [1] in the Financial Times

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