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Ending Stagnation: How Collaboration Tools Are Enabling A New Era of R&D

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Ending Stagnation: How Collaboration Tools Are Enabling A New Era of R&D Ending Stagnation: How Collaboration Tools Are Enabling A New Era of R&D

The disaggregation of drug research

Sponsored Content: Going Beyond Travel Cost Savings to Biopharma R&D, from drug discovery through to late- with other estimates ranging from $1 billion to $5 Achieving Productivity phase clinical trials, suffers from two fundamental, billion, almost everyone agrees biopharma R&D is a Gains near industry-threatening problems: It is too slow shockingly expensive endeavor. and too expensive. And with payers and the public How Polycom is facilitating getting increasingly vocal about drug prices, the Companies have traditionally propped up their remote research long-standing tactic of passing on costs to the expensive R&D operations by charging ever-higher healthcare system is on shaky ground. Something prices for products that win approval. However, How video is enabling fast, has to change. Fortunately for the industry, tools and governments in Europe and payers in the U.S. efficient clinical trials tactics that can shave time and money from drug have started to push back against high drug prices, development already exist. particularly as the huge price tags have spread from What next? The future orphan drugs to products meant for much larger of R&D The need for cost savings is growing more and more markets. The hepatitis C price war between AbbVie clear, as drug development becomes an increasingly and Gilead is the current poster child for the payer expensive process. The Tufts Center for the Study protest, but it’s likely to be just the first of many of Drug Development (CSDD) estimates the cost of attempts to curtail costs. Cardiovascular drugs and bringing a drug to market rose by 145% in constant cancer treatments are among the next targets for currency between 2003 and 2013. That equates to cost-conscious payers. a compound annual growth rate of 8.5%, pushing the total outlay from $1 billion to $2.6 billion over a One way to remain profitable in such an environment decade. Some people have disputed the math, but is to shorten R&D timelines. This saves money

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upfront and adds to profits later, particularly in the table. Every day and dollar count. Much of the competitive therapeutic fields. Gilead’s Sovaldi, for current cost of drug development is tied to the high example, was clearly superior to other available failure rate: Just 10% of drugs that enter Phase I hepatitis C drugs and was priced accordingly. But make it to market, according to a paper published in Ending Stagnation: once competition arrived in the form of AbbVie’s Nature Biotechnology in 2014. That may fall as our How Collaboration Viekira Pak, the price Gilead could charge for Sovaldi understanding of biology grows, but companies can Tools Are Enabling A fell rapidly. Sovaldi is forecast to sell for an average still take immediate steps to cut the time and money it New Era of R&D discount of 46% this year. In this payer environment, takes to establish whether a drug will succeed the value of shaving months off R&D timelines for or fail. The disaggregation of drug drugs in competitive indications is higher than ever. research In the absence of better ways to pick winners based on preclinical data, fast and lean operations that Sponsored Content: “The cost of bringing a drug to market rose by take drugs from one go/no-go decision to the next Going Beyond Travel 145% in constant currency between 2003 and as efficiently as possible are the best option for Cost Savings to 2013” companies. Unfortunately, adopting such a model Achieving Productivity brings up some obstacles. Gains

The disaggregation of drug research How Polycom is facilitating Even a four-month cut to the R&D timeline can make In the late 2000s, the triple blow of the recession, the remote research a difference, as Sanofi and Regeneron showed loss of patent protection on key products and faltering recently when they paid BioMarin $67.5 million for R&D pipelines forced both Big Pharma and biotech to How video is enabling fast, a voucher that will shorten the FDA’s review of their rethink their approaches to organizing and financing efficient clinical trials PCSK9 cardiovascular drug by that amount of time. drug research. With Big Pharma losing patent The four-month saving is of particular value to Sanofi protection on drugs with annual sales north of $100 What next? The future and Regeneron because it gives them a head start billion from 2010 to 2013 and biotechs struggling to of R&D on Amgen in the hotly tipped PCSK9 market. That raise money over the same period, both ends of the said, speed has always been important. In 2010, drug research food chain revamped their approaches. think tank The Manhattan Institute estimated moving Big Pharma tossed out the vertically integrated R&D Herceptin’s approval date forward by one year would sites they had dreamed up in the blockbuster era have added $730 million to Genentech’s earnings. and biotechs adopted capital-efficient, asset-centric models. With R&D costs continuing to rise and the diminishing ability to easily recoup outlays from payers, The responses made large and small companies companies can ill-afford to leave such sums on alike more reliant upon disaggregated networks of in-

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house and third-party teams. Big Pharma companies began outsourcing more R&D work to contract research organizations (CROs) in the West and Asia, while also becoming more reliant on biotech Ending Stagnation: and academia for innovative drug discovery. The How Collaboration upshot is that Big Pharma R&D chiefs have gone Tools Are Enabling A from managing campuses at which most of their New Era of R&D company’s work in a particular therapeutic area takes place, to overseeing global networks of internal and The disaggregation of drug third-party collaborators spanning from San Francisco research to Shanghai. Sponsored Content: Early-stage biotechs have evolved in parallel. Many Going Beyond Travel companies retooled during the financial crisis to Cost Savings to focus on getting their most promising asset to proof- Achieving Productivity of-concept as quickly and cheaply as possible, and their stripped down research models with larger Gains in so doing they de-prioritized the establishment of amounts of money and becoming the darlings of Wall Street in the process. in-house infrastructure. Investors had no desire to How Polycom is facilitating pay to build or buy research centers and Big Pharma remote research had no wish to acquire them as part of deals to add Such a rosy assessment masks ongoing logistical teething problems, though. Eli Lilly revealed some biotech-discovered assets to their pipelines. Once How video is enabling fast, again, the upshot was that more and more biotechs of the communications issues associated with efficient clinical trials moved toward the virtual model of research, in which outsourcing to China when it pulled a portion of its medicinal chemistry work back to the U.S. Albany, a small in-house team managed CROs. What next? The future N.Y.-based CRO AMRI picked up the slack by of R&D The swing from centralized to disaggregated research overseeing a team working out of an underused Lilly was intended to lower fixed costs and give firms laboratory in Indiana. Talking to investors in 2012, access to innovation, wherever it was happening. Big then AMRI CFO Mark Frost said: “One of the major Pharma as a collective has subsequently managed reasons Lilly...pulled [the work] back from China was to bring growth in its outlay on R&D under control— to improve project management and communication the top 10 companies now spend around $70 with their own scientists.” billion a year—and started to chalk up approvals for some potential blockbusters. Biotech firms, having While the problems faced by Lilly are common, its weathered the financing storm, are now combining response was more extreme than those of many of its

 Ending Stagnation: How Collaboration Tools Are Enabling A New Era of R&D // May 2015 Sponsored Content

Going Beyond Travel Cost Savings to Achieving Productivity Gains

Lonza, one of the world’s leading suppliers The RealPresence Platform delivers a highly and the travel desk now encourages employees to the pharmaceutical, healthcare and life personalized experience to every user, where to use video instead of travelling to meetings. science industries, uses a combination of staff can click a name on their Lync contact list Microsoft® Lync® Server 2010 and Polycom® and instantly connect and collaborate together, More Efficient and Personalised RealPresence® video solutions, implemented face-to-face via Polycom video on their desktop Collaboration by Polycom service provider partner Orange or in a conference room-based system to bring Polycom video solutions are being used by all Business Services, to provide an end-to-end people together in high definition. Lonza employees for a wide variety of meet- unified communications and collaboration ings – from management and board meetings, solution to over 11,000 staff across 90 sites Video Bridges the Distance among to facilitating inter-departmental meetings and around the world. Lonza employees, who are Global Locations for the Lowest TCO expediting quality control group meetings Ad- based in multiple locations and involved in a Dispersed over many different business groups ditionally, HR use the rooms for global training wide range of chemical and biological active and locations, Lonza has seen global collabora- and interviews without the need pharmaceutical projects from research to tion increase through the use of high-definition to travel. final product manufacture, can now securely multi-party video conferences, enabling teams communicate via video, voice, instant to gather information together and collaborate Improved Productivity and messaging, and presence no matter where on documents live over video. One of initial Work-life Balance team members are located. driving forces behind Lonza utilising video col- Lonza have seen a major adoption of video laboration was to reduce its travelling costs, but conferencing as it empowers staff to commu- Lonza has also extended their video after a while they discovered another important nicate and collaborate whilst experiencing the collaboration to include Polycom® aspect, it saves time and makes the team more benefits of increased flexibility. Staff now have RealPresence® Immersive video suites productive. They found that conducting meet- more time to do their jobs and be more pro- (Polycom® OTX™ series) and Polycom® ings over video avoided the time taken to plan ductive rather than be tired from jetlag due to RealPresence® Room video solutions for a meeting involving travel. The use of video travelling from Europe to China to the United (HDX® 8000), all powered by the Polycom® conferencing bridges the distances between States. Video collaboration provides Lonza with RealPresence® Platform – an interoperable global locations to cross both language and flexibility and speed, enabling them to meet and comprehensive UC&C software cultural barriers as video collaboration has be- people within the same week without the need infrastructure for universal video collaboration. come central to the way Lonza does business for travel. n

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peers. Others have turned to technology to overcome With its research operations disaggregating, Astellas their communication issues. With video conferencing doubled down on video conferencing. Polycom having passed through its own teething troubles— retained the contract and applied its network such as dropped connections and low resolutions— consulting and Elite Service teams to the job, Ending Stagnation: to mature into a reliable, effective medium, providing proactive assessment and support. The How Collaboration geographic proximity is no longer essential to good result was a network that expanded beyond the 100 Tools Are Enabling A communication. The era of connecting remote teams conferencing systems at Astellas’ Japanese offices to New Era of R&D through intuitive video conferencing systems has include teams in Europe and the U.S. When Astellas arrived. used the system to defy the distance between The disaggregation of drug executives and R&D teams, decision-making research How Polycom is facilitating accelerated. And with billions of dollars resting on remote research these decisions, return on investment in the system Sponsored Content: Astellas’ interest in video conferencing predates soon followed. Going Beyond Travel the existence of the company in its current form. In Cost Savings to 1993—12 years before Astellas was created through Astellas and other users realize returns on their Achieving Productivity the merger of Yamanouchi Pharmaceutical and investments in multiple ways, some of which are Gains Fujisawa Pharmaceutical—Polycom began providing more obvious and easy to quantify than others. The video conferencing services to a business unit hard endpoint is often time-to-market—a metric How Polycom is facilitating that would ultimately become part of the Japanese that improved at Astellas—but there are many other remote research drugmaker. The technology that was available in the factors. Amid the thicket is the intangible issue of 1990s—despite being primitive compared to today’s trust. Quantifying gains in trust is difficult, but many How video is enabling fast, systems—proved useful as a way to connect staff users say engaging face to face with collaborators at efficient clinical trials and cut travel costs. other companies—and even remote outposts of their own business—brings them closer together. From What next? The future In 2008, with 15 years of real-world evidence on of R&D the value of video conferencing in its possession, this trust flows speedier decisions and abbreviated Astellas decided to step up its use of the technology. development timelines. Like many drug developers, Astellas was rethinking Such gains are only achievable if the system is quick its approach to development in response to some of and easy to adopt. Simple, intuitive and reliable are the pressures described previously. In the space of the watchwords at Polycom. The system has to work 12 months, Astellas struck big-ticket deals with a pair the first time, every time and be immediately useable of Californian biotechs. At the same time, Internet by teams regardless of whether they are in Basel, speeds were improving. Home broadband adoption in Bangalore, Boston or Buenos Aires. Video only truly the U.S. topped 50% that year. mimics face-to-face meetings, and the decision

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making and relationship building such talks facilitate, Users can search the audio of recorded meetings when it is so unobtrusive it is invisible. This has been for key words, allowing both attendees and anyone Polycom’s mission for 25 years and the reason it who was unable to be there to quickly find critical trained Astellas’ staff on best video practices. Morale discussions and follow the conversations and data Ending Stagnation: improved after the training. that led to the making of a decision. The value of How Collaboration such asynchronous meetings to geographically Tools Are Enabling A New Era of R&D While retaining the simple, intuitive and reliable dispersed biopharma research teams is particularly mantra, Polycom has gradually built out the functions high given the challenges of meeting across time of its video system to help companies unleash the zones. By lessening this common barrier to fast The disaggregation of drug research power of human collaboration. Each advance is decision-making in drug research, video collaboration designed to better replicate—and in some cases tools can help companies move quickly and improve on—what happens when people get together thoroughly through preclinical tests and into first-in- Sponsored Content: Going Beyond Travel to talk about an issue. Users can now share, analyze human trials. Cost Savings to and mark-up work processes, images and other How video is enabling fast, efficient Achieving Productivity documents from room displays or computers. All the clinical trials Gains annotations and markups can be recorded, as can everything that is said in the meeting. Establishing a research network that provides a flow of new compounds is essential to the future How Polycom is facilitating of biopharma companies, but it is the clinical trials remote research downstream of these activities that are the most expensive and time-consuming steps in the R&D How video is enabling fast, process. The closer a drug gets to the market, the efficient clinical trials bigger the savings available to savvy firms. In 2013, market research group Cutting Edge Information What next? The future calculated Phase III oncology trials cost $74,800 per of R&D patient on average. Some trials top $100,000 per patient. With enrollment numbers for some indications breaking four figures, overall costs are high.

In this environment, small efficiency gains translate into significant savings of both time and money. On the long and oft-discussed lists of areas in which clinical trials can become more efficient, one topic

 Ending Stagnation: How Collaboration Tools Are Enabling A New Era of R&D // May 2015 There are many reasons why the top ten pharmaceutical companies worldwide are Polycom customers.

Perhaps most important is that global operations depend on innovation fueled by collaborative decision environments. Polycom helps companies unleash the power of human collaboration.

Find out how > ©2015 Polycom, Inc. ©2015 Polycom, share: FierceMarkets Custom Publishing, Sponsored By:

is always near the top: Enrolment. Tufts CSDD and gather data in trials covering all indications. calculates that while 90% of trials ultimately hit their Video conferencing meets this need. In doing so, the patient enrolment targets, doing so takes twice as technology removes a barrier to the running of virtual long as expected. Around one in ten sites fail to and semi-virtual trials. In these trials, participants Ending Stagnation: recruit a single patient and more than one-third fall may only need to visit the study site once or twice— How Collaboration short of their enrollment target. Estimates of the or not at all—lessening the geographically imposed Tools Are Enabling A proportion of patients who enroll in a trial but drop out bottleneck on recruitment and retention. New Era of R&D before it ends hover around 25%. The effectiveness of video conferencing as a The disaggregation of drug replacement for physical meetings between research “Video collaboration tools can help participants and study staff is demonstrated by its companies move quickly and thoroughly success in one of the most demanding fields: Central Sponsored Content: through preclinical tests and into first-in- nervous system (CNS) diseases. Clinicians need Going Beyond Travel human trials” to see participants in CNS trials to judge disease Cost Savings to progression based on visual and auditory cues. Achieving Productivity Gains These figures are testament to the fact that the Video can replace physical meetings, but only if the current clinical trial model is failing patients. Only connection is reliable and high quality. The risks of unreliable connections are particularly severe in trials How Polycom is facilitating people who live near to a trial site are able to remote research participate in research. Even then, the inconvenience of mental disorders, because patients may confuse of traveling to and from the site multiple times during jittery video streams for hallucinations. How video is enabling fast, the study can deter people from joining or staying in efficient clinical trials a trial. However, in the 21st century such yoking of With CNS trials necessitating such high standards, trials to geography should be unnecessary. Online, MedAvante knew it needed a near-perfect system What next? The future informed-consent tools and wearable data-collection that biopharma companies trusted if its plan to offer of R&D devices are ending the need for participants to visit remote patient assessments was to succeed. In sites. Pfizer and Sanofi have taken the idea to its 2005, the company chose Polycom as its technology logical conclusion by running fully virtual trials. provider. MedAvante made the decision based on Polycom’s reputation within the biopharma industry Yet while sensors can now track many metrics for providing video streams of the highest quality and that previously necessitated on-site tests, there is reliability. Since then, the business has taken off, still a need for face-to-face interactions between with Polycom supporting more than 1 million minutes participants and study staff. Such communication of video conferencing between trial participants and is important as a way to allay participants’ worries clinicians in the first four years.

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Video conferencing offers some unique benefits to work, not the other way round. Biopharma R&D is CNS trials, primarily relating to its ability to cut the hard enough as it is without technology getting in the risk of biased assessments, but many of the gains way. The goal at Polycom is to facilitate the and the features that make them possible apply to all small changes—a 30 minute video chat instead of an Ending Stagnation: studies. Severing the tie between geography and trial eight-hour flight—that make R&D faster and cheaper. How Collaboration participation will have a huge impact on the efficiency The future looks like today, only more efficient. Tools Are Enabling A of clinical research and will only be widely achievable New Era of R&D through use of video conferencing. Again, not just Here is how it might look: A drug discovered in any video conferencing will do. The system has to be Oxford, U.K. is in-licensed by a biotech based out of The disaggregation of drug simple enough for trial sites and participants to set up Boston, MA. The partners use video conferencing research and use without training. MedAvante found this was to defy the 3,000 miles between their offices and the case with Polycom. collaboratively decide on the next steps for the asset. Sponsored Content: A CRO in Shanghai, China is brought on board to Going Beyond Travel What next? The future of R&D run preclinical tests. All three organizations now Cost Savings to The experiences of Astellas, MedAvante and the keep in touch via video conferencing. The asset then Achieving Productivity 415,000 other companies and institutions that rely on advances into human trials, during which clinicians Gains Polycom for video collaboration show the workplace assess participants remotely on the same technology of the future is unimpeded by geography. Distances the biopharma company uses to liaise with in-house How Polycom is facilitating of thousands of miles become irrelevant to the teams, study sites and CROs. remote research efficient operating of a business. The technology that bridges these gaps will continue to evolve, something How video is enabling fast, Polycom is well placed to both lead and adapt to “Severing the tie between geography and efficient clinical trials given its co-development relationships with other trial participation will have a huge impact vendors and open, standards-based approach to on the efficiency of clinical research” What next? The future compatibility. But how the technology is used will be of R&D as important. In this vision of the future, video conferencing acts Biopharma and Polycom continue to collaboratively as the bridge between remote teams at each step of assess the best ways to use today’s technology, the process, from drug discovery and clinical trials notably by learning how to incorporate tools through to commercial manufacturing, sales and seamlessly into existing workflows. Research units, marketing. The Internet has already made the world trial sites and everyone else involved with bringing seem much smaller, but video conferencing is now a drug to market need tools to fit into the way they ready to defy the adage that nothing can replace

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in-person meetings. Face-to-face meetings via conferencing can lessen those strains by making video conferencing accurately simulate the feel and the distance between research teams irrelevant benefits of gathering in person, with the added bonus and increasing the pool of potential clinical trial that the conversations can be recorded and archived participants. Ending Stagnation: in a searchable format for future reference. How Collaboration Tools Are Enabling A By incorporating video conferencing into drug Biopharma R&D will continue to strain under the New Era of R&D research and clinical trials, biopharma companies burden of many major challenges, but there is no can address some of the factors that caused the cost good reason for geography to be one of them. The The disaggregation of drug of bringing a product to market to double from 2003 experience of Astellas, MedAvante and others shows research to 2013. Over that period, drug research operations that video conferencing technology has eliminated globalized and clinical trials ballooned in size. that particular problem and set the stage for a new Sponsored Content: Both trends put strains on the industry. Now, video era of R&D. n Going Beyond Travel Cost Savings to Achieving Productivity Gains

How Polycom is facilitating remote research

How video is enabling fast, efficient clinical trials

What next? The future of R&D

 Ending Stagnation: How Collaboration Tools Are Enabling A New Era of R&D // May 2015