Eisai, with Oncology Group H3 Biomedicine, Doubles Down on Boston
Summary
The idea is to create an atmosphere of entrepreneurial science, something that supposedly lean and mean biotech firms are known to foster.That culture is something we know Big Pharma companies have struggled to incorporate into their own R&D operations, which have failed over the years to generate enough new products to replace the older ones that are falling prey to generic competition.Spiros Jamas, the president and CEO of Glaxo’s Tempero Pharmaceuticals, notes that there are some definite perks to operating as a biotech with the backing of a large drug company.“There are numerous potential advantages to this business model,” Jamas says in an e-mail, “including creating a truly entrepreneurial culture [and] enrolling… [academic experts] as founders.He adds that such biotech groups benefit from “access to big pharma’s significant drug discovery resources,” while enjoying “autonomous and agile decision making.” Of course, there are also skeptics.