It is well known that it typically takes a decade or more to develop a new pharmaceutical product for market. Will that change after the industry produced and rolled out safe and effective vaccines within a year of COVID-19 being identified as a novel virus? Many industry leaders believe so.
"2021 will actually see a positive and long-lasting impact from COVID-19 in that inefficiencies in the system, particularly when it comes to lack of scale and cost, have been highlighted in a massive way and as a result, structural changes will be implemented," said Ken Chahine, CEO of AI-based cancer detection test developer Helio Health.
David Lucchino,co-founder, president and CEO of biotech company Frequency Therapeutics Inc., expected that "in the years ahead [the industry's] 'pandemic problem solving' mindset will continue to pay off as we more quickly look to adopt novel platforms and approaches to attack the most complex challenges in medicine."
Executives expect change across the board, from product discovery to clinical trials to regulatory review and beyond. Collaboration between companies, institutions and government agencies is expected to flourish.
“Cross-company and cross-industry collaboration fueled the biopharma and medical device industry’s pandemic response. A similar effort will be harnessed more broadly in 2021 and beyond to find breakthrough medicines for difficult-to-treat diseases where innovation may have previously been stalled,” predicted Karin Rosén, chief scientific officer of rheumatic and rare disease drug specialist Horizon Therapeutics plc. “If anything, the race to a safe and effective vaccine has reinvigorated the life sciences industry, and paved the way for faster medicine development.”
“The huge upheaval of processes and leveraging e-technology have brought dramatic improvements in efficiency, and I expect this to help streamline efforts across the industry. I also expect to see streamlining of our clinical trial efforts given the dramatic shift to virtual care and remote monitoring," said Phil Jones, vice president, therapeutics discovery, atthe University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center.
Dermavant Sciences Ltd. CEO Todd Zavodnickshared that view. "I often say that in order for Dermavant to succeed as a startup biotech, we need to be nimble, execution-focused and thoughtful in how we spend our money. Biopharma as a whole has shifted and demonstrated this in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic, and I believe this has enhanced the industry's efficiency and public perception as a whole," he said.
"This year has highlighted the ever-growing need for innovation in drug discovery and shone a light on how the pharmaceutical sector can quickly adapt and make a meaningful impact on humankind when it's facing one of its greatest challenges. The speed at which vaccines have been developed is immense and there is potential for this to continue across all clinical trial work in the future, so I'm hoping to see a more efficient and faster regulatory and development process for new life changing therapies after the pandemic," said Clive Dix, CEO ofC4X Discovery Holdings plc and interim chair of the UK's Vaccine Taskforce.
Daniel Chancellor, director of thought leadership at Informa Pharma Intelligence’s Datamonitor Healthcare, cautioned that this may take time, however: “It may be too soon to see regulatory flexibility necessitated by COVID-19 bleed through into general R&D, but expect the conversations to continue as to how best to capture the benefits of speed such as real-time, rolling reviews outside of oncology,” he said.
Still, optimism is in the air. “In 2021 we can build on the fruitful dynamics developed during the pandemic that significantly improved the relationships between companies, clinicians, regulators and state institutions. Greater speed and better collaborative spirit without compromising rigor and safety! We hope these new dynamics will continue to prevail to accelerate the development of novel therapies in different areas of high medical need,” said Philippe Pouletty, chair of Abivax and CEO of Truffle Capital.
For more predictive content, visit our Outlook 2021 pages: invivo.pharmaintelligence. informa.com/outlook