Industry watching: Knowledge workers in virtual pharma

Looks like Allen Roses has a boutique consultancy focussed on pharmacogenetics. For those who don’t know Allen Roses, he is a former head of genetics research at GlaxoSmithKline and Director of Duke University’s Deane Drug Discovery Institute. The latter came to my attention when I saw an article on PGx Reporter (might require a sub) about the Drug Discovery Institute which called the institute a new model designed to fill the void between academic drug discovery and translational medicine. The whole idea of a virtual pharma has been floated around by different people under different guises and something I’ve alluded to often over time, but I definitely liked the mindset behind Roses’ thinking. The idea is to build a think tank with knowledge of every step of the drug development pipeline and outsource every step to other companies or to academia.

Lost in the same article was that he was also going to start a consultancy, Cabernet, along the same lines and they just announced an agreement with Eli Lilly (free sub required), also very much looking to virtualize a lot of their research and development, so this fits into their thinking. This is what Cabernet does

Cabernet specializes in applying PGx strategies to the drug development and post-marketing setting; designing PGx studies; communicating PGx data to regulatory authorities; genotyping samples; facilitating DNA collection; and obtaining informed consent during clinical trials.

In essence, the Drug Discovery Institute and Cabernet are knowledge centers; organizations that are a collection of knowledge and planning power, but don’t perform any of the actual data collection. The question is as we further the new science, with it’s increasingly networked future in the age of big data, how much will models like this one not just become more common, but essential. Something to monitor.

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