Flexion: The In-Licensing Advantage of Cheap Proof-of-Concept
This article was originally published in Start Up
Executive Summary
The founders of Lilly's radical Chorus experiment have left the mother ship to do the extraordinarily fast and inexpensive proof-of-concept development that have made Chorus one of the most interesting models in the industry. The two new entrepreneurs, backed by Versant, hope that their new company, Flexion, will be able to preferentially sign deals for the shelved molecules that a host of in-licensing start-ups have also been seeking.
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Big Pharma, unable to exploit its own research productivity, is increasingly seeing itself as a supplier of discovery assets. That's bad news for discovery-based biotech, but good news for companies with a talent for faster, more predictable development capabilities. Since its formation in the fall of 2007, Flexion Therapeutics has apparently had no trouble getting Big Pharmas to let them review their shelved compounds, 130 or so of them from eight to 10 companies. Flexion, built around Lilly's fast-to-proof-of-concept strategy, is attempting to take advantage of the trend; it's in-licensed five products from three Big Pharmas.