Traditional drug discovery and development has a history of being long, painful, and expensive. Companies like Gordian are extracting knowledge from this decades-long history, and are using it to create something much better in their mission of curing age-related disease. 

This summer, I interned at Gordian to understand the R&D philosophies and best practices at biotech and pharmaceutical companies, in order to reveal practices that may not be intuitive, but where their understanding may improve Gordian’s own R&D. Basically, what are the most productive R&D practices?

But how is R&D productivity actually measured? The formula below correlates R&D productivity with five different levers, and is used broadly among large biopharmas to measure productivity.

As for how specific companies optimize for productivity, we knew of one paper articulating AstraZeneca’s R&D philosophy, but wanted to see if any other companies were laying out similar research philosophies, and where they disagreed. After perusing papers, websites, and slideshows, I was able to find three core R&D frameworks: Eli Lilly’s “Chorus model,” Pfizer’s “3-pillar framework,” and AstraZeneca’s “5R framework.”

These papers outlined step changes in their R&D processes and highlighted the positive effects that they had, but I still wanted to know: how do these biopharmas actually implement their strategies, and how much of what they preach is actually useful in influencing R&D productivity? To answer this question, we can look at each of these company’s R&D philosophy changes in accordance with the annual numbers of drug approvals and phase 1 clinical trials.

An ideally productive biopharma would have the least number of clinical trials for the most approved drugs yearly, and it should also be noted that the average time a drug spends in the clinic before it is approved is around 7 years. Still, there does seem to be a clear correlation between the occurrence of R&D philosophy shifts and the difference between numbers of trials and drugs in development for these three pharma companies. AstraZeneca and Pfizer seem to have tightened their requirements for starting clinical trials, leading to fewer trials but with a higher average success rate (approvals unchanged or increased), while Eli Lilly seems to favor initiating more phase 1 trials, presumably with an emphasis on killing ineffective programs early.

In addition to analyzing publicly available data, I reached out to 75 people in the biopharma industry, and asked for their insights on how R&D philosophy shifts actually happen at these companies, and what the most impactful decisions have been. From the 9 amazing people who agreed to interviews, I was able to piece together these 4 best practices for “productive” R&D in biopharma.

1. Establishing PK/PD markers early and at multiple stages in the discovery process, in order to understand the biology risk before advancing to later stages.
2. Getting to the “killer experiment” in the first ~5 months of discovery, with an objective process for determining the experiment successes and failures wherever possible.
3. Reducing cycle time and cost by trimming therapeutic areas to <5 and incorporating a ranking system so that highest priority projects are completed first.
4. Understanding the market for a product early in the discovery process, and incorporating studies to test the differentiation of a product against the standard-of-care treatments.

This is by no means a foolproof guide for biopharma R&D operations, and biopharmas often have conflicting views on how a budget should be used or the best organizational strategy, among other issues. And every company has specific considerations based on their indications and pipeline. But Gordian will integrate these lessons into R&D strategy, alongside our unique strategies to improve clinical translation.

On a more personal note, before starting this internship, I was on the phone with Martin when he asked me if cold-emailing people was something I’d be comfortable with. I, like most of my generation, don’t enjoy sending emails to strangers, especially those with more power than me. Then again, every period of growth in my life has come from doing something that’s scared me. And so, I answered: “I’m not comfortable with it now, but I guess I’ll have to be.” 

That decision paid off.

Over the past 3 months, I’ve gone from knowing little-to-nothing about the biopharma industry, to being able to understand the R&D process and how each company navigates it differently. In this time, I’ve learned that at worst, an email goes unanswered, but at best, I’ll get to learn from an expert on topics we’re both passionate about, and develop a lasting connection. Most importantly, I’ve learned what it’s like to work at a company run by people who love what they do, know where they want to go, and will work incredibly hard to get there.

In my (albeit short) professional career, I’ve never before seen a company with the kind of culture Gordian has. Gordian fosters curiosity—with an office library filled by books on R&D, gene therapy, and more. Excellence is an expectation for all the work that is done here, but it never affects the camaraderie among fellow Gors. Overwhelmingly, the people here possess unmatched levels of kindness, whether during lunches—where friends checked in to see how my marathon training was going—or in cheering me on through my final presentation. I’m so grateful for my experience here, and I sincerely thank everyone who has helped me through it.