Plenge Lab
Date posted: October 9, 2015 | Author: | No Comments »

Categories: Drug Discovery

It is not uncommon that I am asked the following question during public talks: “Does innovation happen in large pharmaceutical companies?” Sometimes, the question is just a critical comment, disguised as a question: “Large pharma does not innovate, they just conduct clinical trials and drive up the cost of drugs. Right?” Other times the questions are more thoughtful: “As an academic, I don’t see what happens in industry. Can you describe examples of innovation driven out of large pharma?

[Disclaimer: I am a Merck/MSD employee. The opinions I am expressing are my own and do not necessarily represent the position of my employer.]

At the risk of sounding defensive, here are some answers to the “pharma innovation” question. I know there are many more, and I invite readers to share their examples. Admittedly, the examples are biased towards examples at Merck, but that is just because I know these examples better.

First, the past couple of weeks have been particularly good for industry scientists. These recent examples provide objective evidence to answer the pharma innovation question.

(a) 2015 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. Former Merck scientist Dr. William Campbell was awarded the Nobel Prize for the discovery of an antiparasitic agent used to treat river blindness in places like Latin America, Africa and Yemen.…

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