Therapeutic Area Partnerships: Faster, Earlier and Make Mine Cash

The words on everyone’s lips at Windhover’s second annual Therapeutic Area Partnerships meeting, October 24-26, in Philadelphia, were like an incantation. Proof-of-concept. The meeting, focused on licensing in four therapeutic areas (oncology, neurology, cardiovascular and metabolic) and during which the top partnering opportunities in each category were chosen, was nonetheless as much about dealmaking trends—particularly proof-of-concept (POC) as a value-inflection point—as about the specific candidates its participants highlighted.

Not so long ago—when Big Pharma still had the luxury of believing its pipelines were adequate to support their growth—POC...