Last summer, Lindsay Androski, founder of Roivant Social Ventures, was mulling an initiative that could intertwine Roivant Sciences’ thrust for shelved drugs while improving clinical trial diversity. But Roivant was too small, and so she needed a home. It just so happened that Randy Mills, Ph.D., CEO of Sanford Burnham Prebys, was looking to grow the center’s biomedical sciences school.
The two met one day in August 2021 at a conference room in Washington, D.C., and immediately began “whiteboarding” their plans. Seven months later, those plans have crystallized, with the two organizations announcing a new training program Thursday that aims to both improve diversity in biopharma while providing students with more well-rounded drug development training.
“If we can take really talented, diverse students, provide them with unparalleled training and experience, we can really help shift the paradigm and more quickly implement improvements in diversity at the senior-most levels of the industry,” said Androski in an interview with Fierce Biotech.
Fueling Androski's vision for the initiative were Roivant's plans to move away from building its suite of companies around shelved drugs. But she felt there were still ample opportunities to put those potential therapies to use and needed a vehicle to develop them.
Slated to launch in fall 2023 the program will build off of Roivant’s experience retooling other pharma’s shelved drugs. Students would be able to work with drugs donated to Sanford and get hands-on experience developing them, running clinical trials and incubating small companies.
But Androski acknowledges that the program will need many more partners to get off the ground. She's received some “soft commitments” from a number of companies and is talking with CROs to lend a hand. Androski also plans to work with drug manufacturers with shelved drugs to donate the rights for students to work on them.
Sanford Burnham Prebys, a more than 45-year-old independent research institute in San Diego, will focus on teaching all aspects of drug discovery. Roivant Social Ventures, meanwhile, will train students how to identify drug candidates and build companies.
It's a lesson Roivant is specially equipped to teach, thanks to the biotech's "vant" strategy, which uses the company's platform to launch small, focused biopharmas and health technology companies. Roivant has 13 small companies already under its wing including Immunovant, Aruvant, Genevant and Hemavant, which just spun out in February.
Androski said the finite details of the curriculum are being hammered out now, but the idea is for students to contribute to novel drug development from start to finish.
“The goal is to give them an A to Z exposure of what does drug development involve,” she said. “We want them to have seen it all, basically.”
Looking ahead, Androski anticipates the inaugural class of the program will be a small cohort, although “small” remains undefined. The program will be housed in Sanford Burnham Prebys’ Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences and will be open to students with undergraduate degrees looking to get a Ph.D. She added that other degree options may be available in the future.