Agile ‘NewPharmaCos’ pgxreporter.com
Walser said his company is not focused on rescuing late-stage drugs, but is more interested in advancing currently marketed drugs for which a large number of DNA samples are already available.
“One of our key learnings of the past several years has been that even those late-stage clinical trials in which large numbers of DNA samples are collected resulted in an insufficient number of case and control samples to enable a properly powered study, let alone the subsequent replication of findings in a second, independent set of case and control samples,” Walser said. “As a result, we believe the use of biomarkers to rescue late-stage compounds is unlikely to produce many successes. Instead, existing marketed drugs for which millions of drug-response DNA samples are available are likely to be the first candidates for targeting.”
Both Clinical Data and Perlegen are collaborating with pharma and biotech companies by providing genomic and pharmacogenomics services for clinical trials. Through interactions with pharma companies, these NewPharmaCos get a peek into drug firms' pipelines for low-efficacy drug candidates that they can then license and advance for smaller, genetically targeted populations.
In this way, Perlegen doesn't necessarily see itself as competing with large drug firms. Rather, it hopes to improve upon big pharma's blockbuster products through its genomics services.
“From a business model perspective ... we will not compete with big pharma, but rather serve to better inform patients, physicians, and payers about which of those one-size-fits-all, big pharma products is most likely to provide the best risk-reward profile for a given patient,” Walser said. |
