Eli Lilly Global External R&D Director Yetunde Taiwo On Partnering Plans For Discovery Research: An Interview With PharmAsia News

Yetunde Taiwo, Eli Lilly's global external R&D director, is on a global hunt for molecules that can bolster Lilly's research efforts and arm it with novel therapies. Eli Lilly spends more than $3.4 billion on research every year and prides itself on being a pioneer in collaborating with scientists to bring drugs into the market. Over the last two years, Eli Lilly struck research alliances with at least four Indian companies and has increased its activities in Asia (PharmAsia News, Oct 27, 2008). Taiwo sat down with PharmAsia News' India bureau to give a lowdown on Lilly's risk-sharing strategy to shore up its new chemical entities.

Yetunde Taiwo, Eli Lilly's global external R&D director, is on a global hunt for molecules that can bolster Lilly's research efforts and arm it with novel therapies. Eli Lilly spends more than $3.4 billion on research every year and prides itself on being a pioneer in collaborating with scientists to bring drugs into the market. Over the last two years, Eli Lilly struck research alliances with at least four Indian companies and has increased its activities in Asia . Taiwo sat down with PharmAsia News' India bureau to give a lowdown on Lilly's risk-sharing strategy to shore up its new chemical entities.

PharmAsia News : Deals that Eli Lilly has recently struck with Covance and Quintiles are seen as strategic to its plans to economize drug discovery. Can you tell us more about Lilly's vision?

Yetunde Taiwo: The entire paradigm is changing very rapidly. We realize that we cannot as a company control or handle all the key expertise around the world on aspects like clinical toxicology, safety, clinical end points, and so ultimately we needed to be sure about the quality of the data. So what happens is there [are] a lot of leads when you have a big organization and you need to have control over all of that. So you neither have to build big enough so that your systems are constrained while you have to plan big enough to keep your pipelines flowing. These are times when quite frankly the cost of research is so significantly high, but we do not want to slow down the system either.

More importantly, many of the global organizations like Covance have built in-depth expertise that could be instrumental in delivering good quality data. So they have the flexibility to identify the right way of doing trials as they have handled that function for so many years. And so it's just not costs, there is also a lot of value that comes in handy. We think it's a win-win.

PharmAsia News: Lilly was one of the first to coin the FIPnet model [fully integrated pharmaceutical network]. As an independently operating drug development unit within Lilly's external R&D group, your Chorus model is always searching out new leads that can integrate and plug into Lilly's pipeline holes. This sounds ideal in current times. Are Indian companies being seen as part of your global research network?

Taiwo: Well, we have some discussion on the way and we do not want to talk too much on it. But we have collaborations with Indian companies like Piramal Life Sciences and, as you would know, this is a risk-sharing model. It will be on their compounds and when we both believe that the molecule can be developed further, we can have a revenue sharing arrangement.

In Chorus, we do not look at whether the molecule belongs to Lilly or Chorus. We only look at the value that the asset brings in. We need the molecule's capability and we need the capacity and then comes funding and after we validate the systems, work starts. So it's not important for Lilly to control everything. Sometimes Lilly may bring the molecule, the other partner may bring the technical capability and more partners may get added up. Chorus is as such best suited for the highly risky compounds where the target has to be novel and many partners can work together.

For example, we may know what happens in the efficacy but are not sure about the safety. There may be a second-generation product that has a better selectivity profile than the first and this can be developed. Or sometimes it could be a completely new target and you do not have an appropriate animal model to know whether the molecule will work and if the product can be taken to the proof-of-concept stage.

Chorus currently has 23 molecules in the development stage of which 10 have moved from candidate-selection stage to clinical proof of concept. We take 31 months to complete that cycle against the industry average of 36 months. We manage the whole process on an average of $6 million against the industry's $30 to $40 million.

PharmAsia News: Are you looking at more Indian companies for a closer association?

Taiwo: As I said, discussions are on and Chorus had not spoken much about itself externally. We are now saying yes to potential partners if they have a very new molecule and maybe Lilly can come in.

PharmAsia News: What's your take on the mushrooming of research in India?

Taiwo: Mushrooming of research is really happening all around the globe. These are exciting times and many companies are developing exciting products. Our job is to reorganize and identify the best partner so that patients can benefit from our research activities. Innovation is the key word for us at Lilly. So if innovation is coming from India, we will look at India increasingly, but if it comes from Timbuktu, wherever it is, we will go there. We are not too much driven by places, we are driven by innovation.

PharmAsia News: You struck a joint venture with Jubilant of India. But we are not aware of too much drug discovery work from them. Why did you not go with other research driven companies [PharmAsia News, Oct. 6, 2008]?

Taiwo: Well, I was not part of that discussion about the Jubilant deal, but I think we build some inroads and get to build some contacts. We also had to be convinced about the technical capabilities of Jubilant. To our belief, Jubilant has good research capabilities.

PharmAsia News: Are there more tie-ups coming up in India?

Taiwo: We are not going to have a definite number. Jubilant is a collaborative partner and if there are organizations with some unique capabilities we will take up the proposals on a case-by-case basis depending on how our involvement can help.

PharmAsia News: Have you been happy with collaborative R&D with Indian companies?

Taiwo: If we have done so many collaborations, we mean there is enough to work together here. If that had not been the case, my company would not have sent me here every year [ (Also see "India’s CRAMS Market Set To Leap To $2.46 Billion By 2010" - Scrip, 13 Oct, 2008.)].

PharmAsia News: But is there a sense of panic as R&D pipelines are drying up [ (Also see "Asia Partnerships Critical To Big Pharma’s Drying Pipelines, Merck Exec Tells Bio Korea (Part 1 of 2)" - Scrip, 12 Oct, 2008.)]?

Taiwo: It depends. I will talk about my company's pipeline. Our pipeline is so rich that we cannot handle all of the molecules on our own. Yes, we will be facing some patent expiration in the next few years and we do have a few late-stage products. We have now taken Imclone, which is a strategic deal and so it's wrong to say that pipelines are drying up. For the last 10 years, many big companies merged to grow their pipelines, but we had always thought that growth may not come simply by merging two big companies. We are continuing to do what we have always done.

PharmAsia News: The Jubilant-Lilly JV was to move intellectual property from both companies and work on leads. Can you share some more details?

Taiwo: We really decided to look at each molecule and see what strategic fits can be handled across all therapies. I really do not think I want to talk about the specifics of the deal right now.

PharmAsia News: You have a deal with Glenmark to work on pain management drug GRC 6211. How has the experience been so far?

Taiwo: We always learn a lot from our partnerships, and there is a lot to gain as we go along.

[Editor's note: Lilly dropped GRC 6211 from clinical development three days after this interview with Taiwo but Glenmark stressed that work on other compounds in the therapeutic segment is being assessed (Also see "Lilly Halts Development of Glenmark’s TRVP-1 Receptor Antagonist" - Scrip, 24 Aug, 2008.).]

PharmAsia News: You have signed up with Piramal, Glenmark, Suven and now Jubilant. Who has been the best partner for you?

Taiwo: They all have their unique strengths and our interactions with each of them have always been good. They are good partners to work with. Our due diligence has alliance managers and [they] take into consideration many parameters including the culture that the partnering company has so that the deal can take into account all of those aspects. We recognize that all our partners may not have the same structures like Lilly; they may not [have] the same management, governance, decision-making systems like Lilly. So we do recognize those issues.

PharmAsia News: Of late there are so many cross-sector deals between pharma and biotech companies. Companies are dropping research plans from certain therapeutic segments. Is there desperation to get leads?

Taiwo: For Lilly, if you had seen our therapy distribution 10 years ago, oncology may have been shown as a small part of our focus. We always like to focus on products that show maximum scope of innovation and wherever innovation can come from. If we get good breakthroughs in more therapeutic areas, we work on those. We have gotten out of anti-infectives some years ago because we felt there is more scope to develop our oncology franchise.

Also, we keep in mind the important issue of deploying resources. So we could have increased the headcount or redistributed the existing resources. We chose to go with the latter and so now a lot of innovation is coming in oncology. So each company has a different reason to follow their programs. To have cancer is seen as a death sentence but our aim is to see that the patient stays longer with appropriate medication. With some cancer, when detected early can be a great relief. The research right now is to develop cancer therapies that can stop aggressive spread of cancer cells.

PharmAsia News: Many Indian drug companies have hived off their discovery research entities into separate companies. Do you think Lilly will look at possibilities for equity stake holding?

Taiwo: For early-stage drug development, we look at companies from time to time. We have risk sharing models with many companies internationally but that's only if we are convinced about a new mechanism of action that we go ahead.

- Vikas Dandekar ([email protected])