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INFORMEX Show Daily | Thursday February 21 2013 | Anaheim Convention Center Anaheim California 17
Five Minutes With…
Edward S. Price
President
PCI Synthesis
What are your major concerns
within your market over the next
two years
I’ve got two concerns about trends
affecting the industry. The first is whether
funding for small, emerging companies will
continue. For a while small biotechs got
funding from both the public markets and
venture capital. When the funding from the public markets dried up, the small
biotechs revamped their business model, became more virtual and developed
a greater dependence on VCs for funding. The greater shift to reliance on VC
funding has had a significant impact on the size, scope and approach that emerging
biotechs now take to develop their products. We’re also seeing that VC funding is
slowing as well. So where does that leave small biotechs Right now the primary
exit strategy for VC-backed biotechs is to get acquired by big pharma.
The problem, and my second concern, is that big pharma continues to
consolidate. Pfizer and Wyeth merged; Merck and Schering-Plough merged;
AstraZeneca bought Ardea Biosciences and Bristol-Myers Squibb and AstraZeneca
jointly bought Amylin Pharmaceuticals.
Today most VC-based biotechs’ exit strategy is to be acquired by big pharma
player. With big pharma focused on merging with former competitors, there
are fewer and fewer big pharma firms remaining. This thus limits the number of
potential acquirers that will drive down prices, and, in turn, could drive down
funding. The net result: loss of creativity and dwindling access to funding which will
make value creation even more challenging.
Among the challenges facing the industry, which one do you think
is the most pressing—and why
I think big pharma consolidation is the most pressing challenge facing the
industry. The question is: Will there be enough opportunities for promising biotechs
to sell their technologies Fewer big pharma companies mean fewer companies
looking to acquire small companies. Aside from the business implications, this
means that we may be missing out on the kinds of research that small biotechs can
undertake—research that could lead to breakthroughs but that, at the outset, look
unlikely to generate the kind of blockbuster returns that drive big pharma.
What innovation (not your own company’s) do you believe has
addressed a problem with a creative solution
There is a great deal of work going on with continuous manufacturing. It is very
innovative and inspiring because it seeks to dramatically change pharmaceutical
manufacturing for both drug substance and drug product and has the potential
to greatly improve efficiencies. But at the end of the day, a significant part of the
challenge with continuous manufacturing won’t be the technological issues but
regulatory issues such as how the process will be managed and how to deal with
See 5 Minutes With…PCI Synthesis page 19