NYTimes article today on GlaxoSmithKline includes the following on GSK's efforts to cope with the size v. research productivity issue, discussed from time to time on this thread:
After GlaxoSmithKline's development process was reorganized, Dr. Garnier [GSK CEO] said, researchers have been finding more compounds that may someday yield new drugs. The results, "even though it's early days, have been spectacular," he said.
To counter the inevitable bureaucracy that comes with size, GlaxoSmithKline carved up its research into six units, organized around areas like neurology and cardiovascular disease. Those units, while not completely independent, have considerable authority to decide what potential new therapies to pursue on their own or through licenses from other companies.
"They're killing bad projects early now," he said, and deciding when to license.
He said companies like GlaxoSmithKline have had difficulty developing best-selling drugs largely because of their size: "too many controls, too many layers, all the things that slow down productivity and progress."
The new structure lets the company make decisions faster — sometimes in as little as a day. Previously, they could take months.
After the company was among those that identified an enzyme that appears to play an important role in Alzheimer's disease, for example, the half-dozen people who run the unit that develops neurological drugs took just one day to decide to devote more resources to finding a medicine that could block this enzyme, called beta-secretase. They doubled the number of chemists assigned to the task.
Before the restructuring, the same researchers would have had to consult various divisions within the corporation, and the final say would have belonged to a group of two dozen or so members of a pan-European science committee.
Dr. Garnier argues that GlaxoSmithKline's success is already visible in the number of compounds the company is testing in early stages of drug development. This year, the company has 45 compounds in the first two phases of development, roughly double the number in 2001.
[snip]
To show that he understands the challenge before him, Dr. Garnier, again embracing American culture, paraphrased Jerry Garcia of the Grateful Dead. "Something has to be done about R.& D. productivity," he said, "and frankly it's mind-boggling that we have to be the ones."
The full article is here:
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