Developing a new drug and getting it into clinics can take up to 12 years 鈥� and without the right partnerships early on, many promising ideas fail to even get off the ground.
A drug development boot camp hosted by 国民彩票 this week offered both researchers and pharmaceutical industry reps a chance to come together under one roof to sharpen their skills and improve their chances of building successful partnerships across academic and industry boundaries.
The intensive two-day educational event was the brainchild of Doris Grant and Andrea McCormick of Dal's (ILI) office, a team that helps facilitate the commercialization of research at the university.
"You need good science, but partnerships are all about people," said Doris Grant (below), associate director of life and health sciences at ILI. "Putting people together and giving them the opportunity to speak and spend some time together goes a long way to establishing a successful partnership."
About 40 academics 鈥� including researchers, post-docs and grad students from Dal and Cape Breton University 鈥� participated in the event along with members from Innovative Medicines Canada, an industry association for the national pharmaceutical industry that partnered with the ILI and other groups on the event including 国民彩票 Medical Research Foundation, Springboard Atlantic, BioNova and the 国民彩票 Faculty of Medicine.
The conference included lectures, hands-on simulations and one-on-one consultations with industry veterans on everything from the language and skills needed to engage the interest of industry and large biotech companies to understanding the processes that can increase the likelihood of establishing funding partnerships.
Learning from industry insiders
Pharmaceutical industry experts were brought in to help facilitate some of the activities, which included a role-playing simulation where teams learned what it鈥檚 like to be an academic entering into an industry culture.
"They're learning how to create data in their labs and identify resources for creating that data to interest partners in the development of medicines 鈥� how to translate their basic bench-top research into biotech industry products," said Dr. Chari Smith, one of the three consultants brought in for the event. (The other two were Fernando Alberdi, a Michigan-based lawyer with Honigman, and Brad Henke, who runs Opti-Mol Consulting in Raleigh, North Carolina.)
Dr. Smith 鈥� a 25-year veteran of British pharma giant GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) and drug development consultant at Princeton University 鈥� said while some partnerships are built on relatively straightforward licensing deals, others require more complex collaborations from conception of a topic through to choosing a clinical candidate