Intensive Pharming

Drug companies are engaged in a relentless drive to improve the productivity of their research activities. Intent on simplifying organization structures and speeding up the decision making process, what kind of results can we expect from this more intensive approach to the cultivation of new medicines?

February has been eventful in the world of pharmaceutical research policy. Pfizer and Roche both made bold announcements about their future research strategies, promising a simplification of the way research activities will be organized. And both their strategies involve thinning out middle management so that strategic decisions can be taken faster.

Pfizer's 2005 research budget was the second highest corporate research spend ever and a full 20% larger than its nearest rival in the pharmaceutical sector. But that ranking is unlikely to survive the lab closures and cuts to research staff that are currently in the works.

Scientific domestication
Research at Pfizer will ultimately be concentrated at 3 global centres. The company will focus on just 10 diseases, directing individual research teams to focus exclusively on one disease. This reorganization will result in the weeding out of Pfizer's research centre in Ann Arbor, Michigan, the laboratory that discovered Pfizer's blockbuster cholesterol lowering drug Lipitor.

Commentators have cautioned against organizing drug research into individual diseases, arguing that this prevents valuable synergies between therapeutic areas. February's edition of the journal Nature echoed this sentiment with a quote from University of Michigan's Alan Saltiel saying "A lot of drug discovery is serendipity".

All this seems like a large number of scientists to shepherd along such a defined path. And given the intensity with which this path is being pursued, it could take a long time to turn back if anyone should discover that serendipity is needed after all.