Much has been written about a perceived lack of innovation in the pharmaceutical industry, as it relates to productivity. While some of the criticism may be justified, much is not. Clearly, you can question the investments that companies made in the 1990s to develop de novo high-throughput technologies. More recently, you can question the concept of building a portfolio that will deliver products by targeting appallingly low industry attrition rates. Finally, it would be fair to question whether our investment in understanding disease biology in support of our selecting the best targets has been sufficient.
However, it is also fair to say that the diseases and targets we are pursuing today represent formidable challenges, in terms of their late age of onset, chronic nature, polygenic origin, and combination therapy requirements. Innovation is the key driver for success in our industry and it is not lacking. However, we can drive greater ...
