How does a pharma giant like Pfizer get entrepreneurial in the biotech field? For Corey Goodman, head of Pfizer's Biotherapeutics & Bioinnovations Center in San Francisco, the answer lies in small teams of scientists who stay with a program as it advances through clinical trials. And Pfizer has decided to take the same approach across its entire R&D arm.
"We were looking at the notion of these large research sites the pharmaceutical companies have, and we were asking ourselves, how can we bring in some of the models from the biotech world," Goodman told BusinessWeek. "We not only built the model in [our research center]. But we adapted that model to the overall global research effort."
Pfizer's commercial group is also being brought into the development act, talking with doctors to get some real-world insights into the kind of therapies that should advance into late-stage trials, and which should be shelved.
Adds Goodman: "They work with the doctors to figure out what patients need so they can make the right decisions about what kinds of drugs they should really be bringing into [later trials] that will really have a major impact on human health. Even a company as large as Pfizer has to decide where to place its bets."
- for the full interview, go to the report in BusinessWeek