outsourcing

Podcast brought to you by: Assay Depot - the world's largest cloud-based marketplace for research services. With Assay Depot, you can easily find the perfect research service provider and manage your project from anywhere in the world.

Guest:

Barbara Handelin, PhD, President, BioPontis Alliances Bio and Contact Info

Listen (6:02) BioPontis, an asset based model for drug development

Listen (8:04) Designing new incentives for academic researchers

Listen (6:07) First finding out where industry partners place value

Listen (3:54) Advantages of an overall view

Listen (6:11) How do you find the best science?

Listen (2:32) Why not create new companies?

Listen (8:32) Virtual model built on strong relationships and new agreements

Listen (4:36) Challenges for a virtual company

BioPontis Alliance is pursuing a new asset based model in drug development. That means the company sees drug candidates through from the original science to early phase without creating companies to develop each drug. Rather, through an alliance of university researchers, a venture fund, CROs and industry partners, BioPontis stays focused on the particular drug candidate, or asset. Dr. Barbara Handelin is the president of BioPontis. She is a veteran entrepreneur and molecular medical geneticist who has pioneered the responsible application of genetics to clinical medicine for over 25 years. In 1987 Dr. Handelin established one of the first commercial DNA testing laboratories at Integrated Genetics (now Genzyme Genetics). After co-founding a gene therapy company in 1995 (Genovo), Dr. Handelin began her own consulting practice, Handelin Associates. She served 10 years as a board member of Public Responsibility in Medicine and Research (PRIM&R) as well as on a variety of federal committees and advisory panels on ethics in genetic testing.

At BioPontis they are addressing critical problems in the industry. One of these is the misaligned incentives for academic researchers. It's so often the case today that researchers hold back important discoveries until they are able to publish in an important journal and so advance their career. BioPontis has designed agreements to address this protectionism, offering researchers incentives for collaborating more closely. Also, in doing away with the idea that you have to form a company for each new drug candidate--more overhead, more time, more cost--BioPontis focuses instead on 'assets', saving time and money. Barbara talks about the virtual model that's really a hybrid between venture fund and R & D and how this model could very well be the future.

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Kevin Lustig, PhD, CEO, Assay Depot Bio and Contact Info

Opening up the World of Drug Discovery: Kevin Lustig, Assay Depot from mendelspod on Vimeo.

Listen (4:33) Assay Depot

Listen (6:33) What took so long to get an Amazon for the life sciences?

Listen (7:18) Empowering individual scientists

Listen (3:33) What is a programmable lab?

Listen (5:55) Drug development from the beach at Waikiki

Listen (2:07) Open Science Challenge

As the pharma industry moves toward more outsourcing and virtual business structures, a new online exchange has emerged as a popular platform for life science transactions. AssayDepot.com has been called by Atul Butte, bioinformatics professor at Stanford, a Home Depot for science. In today's show we talk with the co-founder and CEO of Assay Depot, Kevin Lustig. Originally Kevin and his colleague created the site to complement what was going to be a new CRO in San Diego. Soon they realized the site itself, with features borrowed from Amazon, Kayak, and Google, offered a greater business opportunity than another CRO. Kevin talks about the platform and its various features and at large about new trends in pharma.

Podcast brought to you by: Assay Depot - the world's largest cloud-based Research Exchange for pharmaceutical research services.

Guest:

Bernard Munos, Founder of InnoThink Bio and Contact Info

Listen (5:25) What to do to correct poor situation?

Listen (4:30) Open source R & D

Listen (4:28) Critical mass becomes one human brain

Listen (8:40) Issue of IP and other challenges for open model

Listen (5:07) Examples of open source R & D

Listen (9:53) Is this a personal calling?

Listen (4:31) Is your message taking hold with big pharma?

Listen (5:20) When it comes to drug R & D, the bolder the better

Bernard Munos is the founder of InnoThink, a partnership dedicated to bringing innovation to the pharmaceutical industry. In this second of a two-part interview, Bernard presents his solutions for radically improving the way drug development is done. Bernard, who calls himself an 'apostle of innovation', is a proponent of radical disruption, specifically going to an open source model of R&D, with smaller, even virtual companies. Speaking out after a 30 year career at Lilly, Bernard is not constrained by a corporate boss or short-sighted shareholders. He's calling for big change, "the bolder the better."

Chatting with Bernard at a local winery in Los Gatos

Podcast Sponsor: Assay Depot- The world's largest cloud-based Research Exchange for pharmaceutical research services. Assay Depot is currently sponsoring the Open Science Challenge. Submit your research plan to assaydepot.com, for a chance to win from the $10,000 prize pool. Guest: Elizabeth Iorns, CEO, Science Exchange Bio and Contact Info Listen (4:21) What is Science Exchange? Listen (3:06) Who are the providers? Listen (1:33) Advantages of being vendorized Listen (3:02) Will this send jobs overseas? Listen (11:06) Participation in Y Combinator Listen (3:55) Is this the future? Listen (1:38) New site trends Outsourcing is more and more the trend in bio these days. In an effort to reduce the huge cost of drug development, big pharma is teaming up with universities and small biotech. One hears of new virtual companies set up relying completely on a network of partners, much like NuMedii, a company we recently profiled. Yet there are challenges that come with outsourcing. Elizabeth Iorns and her colleagues have started scienceexchange.com to address just those challenges. The site is being referred to as an eBay for science. A former researcher herself at the University of Miami, Elizabeth joins us today to tell us about this new marketplace and how it solves outsourcing challenges.