DECEMBER 2023LIFE SCIENCES REVIEW9Prebys in La Jolla, California. We initially entered a comprehensive alliance to develop first-in-class therapeutics for the treatment of cardiovascular-metabolic diseases. This was later extended to include rare diseases and oncology. The collaboration was based on an open-innovation model to bridge the gap between target discovery and pre-clinical drug development. The focus was on studying new mechanisms of disease to identify, validate, and screen novel drug targets to address unmet medical needs worldwide. Sanford Burnham Prebys identified and validated targets in collaboration with Daiichi Sankyo, after which collaborative teams conduct drug screening to identify compounds that modulated the targets using facilities at both sites. Scientists at Daiichi Sankyo have appreciated continued and expanded access to Sanford Burnham Prebys' deep human biology insights and drug discovery technology, with the goal of advancing lead compounds toward clinical trials. During the pandemic, due to respective quarantines in California and Tokyo, experiments were delayed at both partners' sites leading to missed timelines on multiple occasions. However, due to the close, collaborative relationship that has developed over many years between our two groups, we were able to support each other. We covered each other's workloads as each respective lab opened in the different regions, even if it was not a task initially allocated to that group. Additionally, there was also flexibility as to the allocation and utilization of the budget from one fiscal year to the next as some timelines were extended beyond the original plan.From nearly the beginning of the pandemic, the traditional interaction among academia, biotech, and pharma was disturbed. One of the first major meetings cancelled was a key annual university tech transfer meeting for engaging organizations across multiple disciplines, followed by the Keystone conferences and numerous scientific, clinical, and business meetings. There was a near instantaneous collapse of the usual conferences that were relied on to publicize novel ideas and advance scientific knowledge and drug development. While technology became increasingly sophisticated in allowing meeting participants to interact virtually, this never approached the collegial, informal, intermingling that occurs when you happen to engage the person sitting next to you in a conversation about their work. In addition, at virtual scientific and medical conferences, one can no longer approach someone at their poster or after their talk. These spontaneous personal interactions were all but eliminated. Other interactions between academia, biotech, and pharma based upon mutual interest in a research or clinical project were either delayed or came to a halt. For example, something as simple as a material transfer agreement, which allows a compound to be transferred from a university or biotech to a pharma that is interested in reproducing data, may not have occurred since either or both labs may have been closed due to pandemic restrictions. These types of interruptions led to delays in starting collaborations and potentially extending the timeline for the entire drug development process. In conclusion, one of the lessons for drug developers from this pandemic is the vital intersection of academia, biotech, and pharma have in producing medical therapies. Even though the ideal will probably always be in-person meetings, we need to be able to continually think of innovative ways of communicating and working together effectively to ensure that progress to develop safe and efficacious drugs to meet unmet medical needs is not delayed, even when extraneous forces do not allow us to communicate or allocate work as effectively as we would like. With the first mRNA vaccines being made available during the pandemic inform us that the continued innovation can occur even during a pandemic. It will be interesting to see how new advances in technology, such as the metaverse and artificial intelligence, may mitigate some of these issues. However, for the foreseeable future, in-person events and collaborations will continue to be the method of choice for advancing science into new medicines. With the first mRNA vaccines being made available during the pandemic inform us that the continued innovation can occur even during a pandemic. It will be interesting to see how new advances in technology, such as the metaverse and artificial intelligence, may mitigate some of these issues
< Page 8 | Page 10 >