Innovative Portfolio
An innovative portfolio requires three essential elements:
The first is a focus on disease areas where there remains significant unmet medical need and where we believe our medicines can make a real difference in people’s lives. These disease areas include:
Second, having the capabilities necessary to pursue the right modality for the right target – whether biologics or small molecules – from discovery through development and manufacturing. While small molecules will provide a solid foundation of new therapies going forward, we believe that 25 percent of major drugs in the future are likely to be biologics. To that end we have been building significant capabilities in biologics for more than 20 years. From 2002 to 2007, two of our seven new molecular entity approvals in the U.S. were protein therapeutics, putting us in a tie for first place among 11 major pharmaceutical companies - and just behind the major biotechs. A portfolio of both biologics and small molecules will allow us to focus on a diversified mix of opportunities to intervene in the disease process, as well as the flexibility to pursue new mechanisms.
And finally, generating clinical data that clearly demonstrate real value – both for payors and for patients – in assessing the relative benefit and risk of any therapy. Our job is not only to optimize our development strategies for regulatory success, but also to generate data that demonstrate compelling economic value for payors and support pricing that appropriately reflects the innovations achieved.