Life Science Leader Magazine Supplements

CMO 2017

The vision of Life Science Leader is to help facilitate connections and foster collaborations in pharma and med device development to get more life-saving and life-improving therapies to market in an efficient manner. Connect, Collaborate, Contribute

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LIFESCIENCELEADER.COM THE CMO LEADERSHIP AWARDS 2017 11 ment function basically from zero," she says. "I was mostly on the side pushing for innovations when I was at Genentech, and I can see that the equation doesn't change that much. You have to understand what the positive impact of innovations are to the sponsor's business." Her prime example is a first assumption by large molecule tially modernized process, in which you could implement innova- tion, into the existing equipment and technology in the plant. So not only do we have a problem innovating on products that are already commercially available, we have one innovating on prod- ucts throughout the entire pipeline. "It becomes self-sustaining," Larson laments. "The only way this gets altered is when you have something truly disruptive — like cell- based therapies — where you are forced to do things completely different." Waiting for these innovation disrup- tions can mean patients, pricing, and products are slow to benefit from any modernization. Nevertheless, Larson believes there are still incremental ways to modernize and innovate in the sup- ply chain. "For example, I've had great experiences collaborating on process analytical technology [PAT] via cross- industry groups. I've also worked with these groups on technology-development road maps for biologics manufacturing. Cross-industry technical experts will come together for a mutual goal, and I witnessed the collaboration among users of emerging single-use technologies. There's a big benefit to standardizing sin- gle-use equipment options, similar to the benefit we all get in our daily lives from using standard USB connectors for our communication devices. The fundamen- tal question always has been: How can we together advance meaningful innovation into our industry, and learn to help the suppliers help us in the effort?" A good place to start might be ensur- ing service providers understand the meaning of "meaningful" to their cus- tomers, which brings us back to speed to market and understanding real business drivers. Change For The Good Or No Change AT All Unfortunately, says Larson, there can be a disconnect between drug developers and their external partners about what is truly beneficial in an overall business sense. "I have this great opportunity at Achaogen to build an antibody develop-

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