New research models

The organization of the pharmaceutical industry research structures and the expertises of its employees are changing. According to a series of phone interviews with 130 human resource managers of U.S. pharma and life science companies, conducted by PwC Health Research Institute in February 2013, in the past three years, 35% of companies have revised their R&D models downsizing with layoffs and moving to models based on partnership, alliance and even crowdsourcing. As a result the new researchers are not required so much technical skills, but regulatory and relational capacities. According to 51% of the human resource managers surveyed, finding these new profiles is not easy and only 28% saying they’re very confident they’ll have access to top talent.

Companies have also revised their pipeline focusing on biological and new alliances, targeted acquisition of new molecules, with academic medical centers, contract research organizations and government contracts. Consortia, alliances with foundations and also the use of crowdsourcing are among the new approaches put in place to share risks and rewards with partners.

According to a survey conducted by KPMG among 107 top U.S. executives, 52% of the earnings of the company is due to molecules arising from internal research, while 36% comes from alliances with external partners.Rrespondents think that this year they will invest in recruitment (47%), acquisition of business (41%) and research and development (40%). The main concerns are the regulatory burden seen as an obstacle to the growth now and in the future (50%) of the respondents, the loss of patent protection (48%), the policies of price controls (32%) and lack of products in lines of research (30%).