Big Pharma

There is a (not overly) revealing article about GlasoSmithKline at The Scientist written by Yvonne Greenstreet, the Chief Strategist of R&D. She discusses the process of scientists working to develop drugs. The process still remains a giant black box for most people taking those drugs and even most academic scientists. I think most academic scientists would describe big pharma in fairly negative terms. Once I mentioned a highly-regarded post-doc position at Novartis to the reply: "You're going to sell you soul?" No kidding, kids. Here are two interesting features:

Discovery Performance Units (DPUs, groups of 5 - 60 scienists):

• Responsible for
  developing their own projects and drugs and for proving their effectiveness with
  preclinical trials.
• Write their own business
  plans and defend them.
• Freedom to go outside the company to build
  deals and partnerships with academia and other biotechnology companies.
• Receive funding for three years, at which time
  their projects are reviewed and a decision made whether to terminate or continue.
• Control their own budgets, which can be spent internally or externally.

There are currently 35 DPUs.

Discovery Investment Board (DIB):

• Includes experts from venture capital companies and biotech CEOs.
• Evaluates the research plans and funding.
• Assess the capabilities of
  the DPU management teams.

The point of learning form academia comes up in the article. One point, as evidenced above, is that, just like in academia, scientists need some wiggle room, they need projects that have an opportunity to fail. The external reviews and the responsibility of writing their own business plans (read grant applications) is basically like in academia.