LESI conference 2011
Andy Richards, a biotechnology entrepreneur and chairman and director of various Cambridge-based biotechnology companies, chaired a panel that looked at the challenges facing 21st century life sciences companies.
Richards said that many of the new technologies being invented do not fit current licensing business models. The life sciences market is further complicated by companies such as Google and Microsoft entering a market (through research funding) already populated by mainstays such as GE.
New business ventures from emerging markets may add to this because it is unclear “what form those will take”, he said.
On the same panel, Ken Powell, executive chairman of Q-Chip, a life sciences company based in Cardiff, outlined the challenges facing companies involved in pharmaceutical research and development. He said that a host of important patents would expire—and so a lot of money would leave the industry—this year. This would mean that there would be little money left for new discoveries.
“Big pharma has lost interest in its own internal R&D for discovery,” he said. Many pharmaceutical companies are relying on academia to discover new drugs, but this is unsustainable. “Everybody is trying to pick the pocket of the company in front, but academia’s pocket is very small—there’s not enough to feed everyone,” Powell explained.
Rami Suzuki, director of the business section at Japanese pharmaceutical company Eisai, pointed to the pivotal studies that are required to gain regulatory approval for drugs as a barrier to discovery. “They are financially unviable and eat a big chunk of our R&D budget,” she said.
John Alty, head of the UK Intellectual Property Office, chaired a discussion on how IP can support the technology of the future. He said that UK businesses “invest more in intangibles than tangibles”, a sign that IP is important for many companies that contribute to innovation.
On the same panel, Fred von Lohmann, Google’s senior copyright counsel, said that creativity is currently doing well, and “it’s not, as some have suggested, like the sky is falling”.
Creativity is booming on the Internet, according to von Lohmann. He said that 48 hours of video are uploaded to video hosting site YouTube every minute. “Creativity is working quite well today and copyright is working quite well to support it,” he added.
Other conference highlights included a look at how English soccer team Manchester United was developed into a dominant global sports brand and how software patents can be successfully exploited in the US and Europe.
