Interesting article on MLNM from Financial Times via NewsEdge Corporation :
To most people, drug discovery still calls to mind the image of a brilliant scientist pondering a great
problem. To Mark Levin, chief executive officer of the biotechnology company Millennium, drug discovery is something far more industrial; he compares it to a production line. "There's no difference between this and car manufacturing," says Mr Levin. "You put together the parts and you've got a product."
It is a numbers game, says Mr Levin. Within the decade, the company hopes to be putting out a dozen or more products a year. The average pharmaceutical group tests some 25-50 compounds to get a product. Millennium says it will bring that ratio down to one in 10. Enhanced productivity will come, Mr Levin claims, from improved speed and efficiency, using biotechnology's equivalent of the assembly lines and conveyer belt.
Mr Levin's philosophy is deceptively simple. Test more compounds and you get more products. Improve efficiencies and you get even more. Millennium's super computing capability and automated laboratories work at high speed to push compounds through the steps of drug discovery.
The company's scientists, following a process now common in the industry, first identify one of the genes associated with a disease. Researchers figure out the proteins associated with that gene, screen thousands of molecules to see if they have any impact on the protein, then move the best candidates into pre-clinical trials. At that point Millennium will probably sell those candidates to pharmaceutical companies, which will organise clinical trials, attain approval and market the final product.
Millennium's technology platform aims to do three things. First, the company has amassed vast amounts of data on the human genome, proteins and other molecules. Millennium leverages that data with software that picks up on patterns. For instance, if the company's computers discover that a certain bump on a molecule boosts toxicity, the company will rejig its research to eliminate, automatically, those candidates early in the process. Finally, the company depends on robotics to test drug compounds as quickly as possible.
The company's technology platform is among the best in the industry - so good, in fact, that it makes a profit by selling its tools to other companies. These sales take the form of "strategic alliances". Millennium's war chest of committed funds from alliances with other pharmaceutical companies was recently boosted to about $1bn by a $465m collaboration with Bayer.
"We're pulling away from the pack on alliances," says Mr Levin. In addition to Bayer, the corporation's partners include Roche, Pfizer, Eli Lilly, Astra and American Home Products.
Because of revenue flow from such alliances, Millennium is one of the only biotechnology companies around that turns an occasional profit. The group lost $81m last year but was in the black in 1995. This success has made Millennium a darling of the stock market. At the end of last month, it was
valued at $428m, making it one of the best capitalised corporations in the industry.
Part of the enthusiasm may come from the fact that the group looks, to many analysts and investors, more like a software company than a biotechnology company. By selling its technology platform, Millennium is looking at shorter-term payback than the vast majority of groups in the industry.
The trouble is, Millennium itself places a higher value on its drug discovery effort than its technology products. "Let's face it, at some point, the entire human genomic will be known," says Mr Levin. "Data and technology has a value but it's a limited value and only there for a short amount of time. To really leverage the company, you've got to put drug discovery into the equation."
It is in this area that Millennium has yet to prove itself. The company has no pharmaceutical products on the market and by its own admission, probably will not have for another five years. But to investors, who are often scared off by an industry that seems to rely heavily on chance, Millennium's matter of fact approach is appealing.
"Of course there's a risk that we won't be as successful as we'd hoped," says Mr Levin. "But we're using proven technologies. There's no big mystery here."
Victoria Griffith Copyright Financial Times Limited 1998. All Rights Reserved.
Financial Times -- 10-06-98, p. 04
Note from BJ: Not all of the "facts" stated in the article appear to be entirely accurate (yet), like the $ stated from the Bayer deal going into the war chest. But interesting nonetheless. |
