Near-Term BioPharma Profitability: Must-Have or Distraction?
Executive Summary
Being profitable has its advantages, particularly in the current biopharma funding environment-and particularly for those companies able to leverage relatively small investment into relatively quick profitability. But for firms whose own pipelines have yet to come to fruition, it also imposes constraints and pressures on management that wouldn't otherwise be there. In Vivo Europe Rx looks at how four of Europe's biopharma firms became profitable, and how this has affected company strategy. Their differences lie precisely in the purpose of their early profits-as a means to an end, or as the end in itself.
You may also be interested in...
Technology Transfer at the Wellcome Trust
The Wellcome Trust has initiated a new approach to helping accelerate the transformation of scientific research into useful medicines. Through its University Translation Awards and Strategic Translation Awards, the Trust hopes to encourage collaboration between university researchers and tech transfer operations, fill funding and support gaps as they arise, and back high potential, targeted projects that may otherwise have difficulty finding finance.
European Biotech M&A: Often Last Resort, but Welcome Nevertheless
Consolidation among Europe's biotech firms is picking up, but less for strategic reasons than simply to secure the cash to survive. Whatever the drivers, though, and however ruthless the concurrent cost- and program cutting, M&A should help create better adapted, bigger companies-something investors have long been calling for. Indeed for most merging companies, M&A is just the first step towards more strategic business-building moves in the near future.
Actelion: A Model for European Biotech
Actelion reached profitability in record time by focusing from the start on the development and commercial end of the business. It in-licensed an unusually late-stage pipeline made up of compounds its founders helped develop, and built its own global sales and marketing infrastructure to maximize the value of its projects. Now Actelion plans to leverage growing profits to go back and nurture earlier stage research-a top-down biotech-building model that may prove inspirational to others.