Pfizer R&D head sees more drug collaborations

By Bill Berkrot

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Pfizer Inc's research chief said he foresees more collaborations with other pharmaceutical companies in an effort to share the cost and risk of drug development and potentially get more experimental medicines into expensive late stage testing.

"I certainly would like to do more," Martin Mackay, Pfizer's global head of research and development, said on Wednesday at a pharmaceutical conference in Manhattan.

Pfizer is already involved in a co-development collaboration with Bristol-Myers Squibb Co on the experimental blood clot preventer apixaban from a highly anticipated new class of medicines that has been targeted by several drugmakers.

Some investors dislike such risk-sharing deals as any profit that comes from a successful new drug must be shared.

But Mackay has been so pleased with the Bristol arrangement that it has whetted his appetite for more.

"The apixaban deal has been terrific. It's an excellent collaboration," said Mackay, who was taking part in a panel discussion along with the research heads of Eli Lilly & Co, Wyeth and Johnson & Johnson at the Windhover Pharmaceutical Strategic Alliances conference.

"I think it has exceeded both teams' expectations," he said. "When we put them together we found more synergies than I certainly had anticipated."

Such collaborations could help medicines and molecules that might otherwise languish in limbo eventually see the light of day.

"Like most of us, we have this burgeoning phase 2 pipeline which is beginning to move into phase 3, probably too many for the budget than we have, healthy as that is," Mackay said, referring to the world's largest drugmaker's more than $7 billion annual R&D budget.

Phase 3 is typically the final stage of human testing before a new drug is submitted to regulators for an approval decision and involves large, extremely expensive clinical trials. So decisions on which drugs to move forward into phase 3 are as critically important as any a drug company makes.

Steven Paul, head of Lilly's research labs, said he would love to have back some of the drug candidates they decided to pass on, which have turned out to be successful.

Mackay said Pfizer would be looking at collaboration opportunities even on drugs that are not yet nearing the critical phase 3 decision.

"I would like to be more creative about our assets, not just in the late stages but in earlier stages too," he said.

"I see us outlicensing more of our assets and being creative about the deal making terms," Mackay said.

Given the disturbingly high failure rate of experimental medicines -- 70 to 75 percent of all phase 2 drugs by Paul's account -- all the panelists agreed that creative risk-mitigating strategies are necessary going forward.