Date: 23 August 2011
Source: KEIonline.org
Link: http://keionline.org/node/1203
John L.
LaMattina, the former President of Pfizer Global Research and Development, has just
published an article in Nature that looks at the impact of drug company mergers
and increased industry concentration on R&D. Among his conclusions: the
"impact on the R&D of the organizations involved has been
devastating."
NATURE
REVIEWS | DRUG DISCOVERY VOLUME 10 | AUGUST 2011 | 559
The
impact of mergers on pharmaceutical R&D
John L.
LaMattina (former President of Pfizer Global Research and Development)
Mergers and
acquisitions in the pharmaceutical industry have substantially reduced the
number of major companies over the past 15 years. The short-term business
rationale for this extensive consolidation might have been reasonable, but at
what cost to research and development productivity?
Concerns about
the productivity of pharmaceutical research and development (R&D) are
becoming increasingly common in both the mainstream media and scientific
literature. A range of possible causes have been identified, from more
challenging therapeutic targets to excessive bureaucracy, and various
approaches to address these issues have been put forward (for example, see REFS
1,2). However, the impact of mergers and acquisitions on R&D productivity
is less well documented, because R&D integrations and cuts are largely done
privately. In this article, it is argued that although mergers and acquisitions
in the pharmaceutical industry might have had a reasonable short-term business rationale,
their impact on the R&D of the organizations involved has been devastating.
