Big Pharma's Response to R&D Woes: More Early-Stage Compound Deals

The earnest tone of the discussions at this year's Pharmaceutical Strategic Alliances Conference reflected an increasingly common assumption among industry executives and insiders: the drug industry's growth problem isn't a merely cyclical issue. Declining productivity, a problem evident in biotech companies as well as Big Pharma, is to blame. Industry executives provided mixed opinions on how to best tackle this challenge, but both Pfizer and Bristol-Myers Squibb suggested a trend towards early-stage compound licensing.