Outsourced Drug Discovery; an Effective Way to Cut Costs and Increase Productivity for Many Biotechnology and Pharmaceutical Companies

 

Over the years, outsourced drug discovery has become quite common due to increased demand for medical research and development around the world. Outsourcing is a strategy, by which pharmaceutical or biotechnology companies hire another company for planned and/or existing activities including clinical research, preclinical development, and drug discovery. Outsourced drug discovery is a contract-based procedure, which is conducted by the contract research organizations (CROs). Drug discovery outsourcing has enabled established pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies to focus on the development of new products that can bring about significant therapeutic change and provide tangible advantages to the company's shareholders.

Contract research organizations manage almost all aspects of drug discovery. With billions of dollars in research and development costs, pharmaceutical companies worldwide are always looking for new ways to address their production processes in a cost-effective manner. One way to achieve this is through outsourcing drug discovery and development services. This type of service refers to the collaboration between small and large pharmaceutical or biotechnology companies to conduct research and development activities aimed at finding better solutions to the company's core chemical concerns. In short, outsourcing is an agreement between contract research organization (CRO) and chemical, biotechnological, and pharmaceutical industries.

Drug discovery is one of the most important processes for all pharmaceutical manufacturing plants. Nowadays, majority of the biotechnological plants are focusing on developing drugs that can fight against deadly diseases. However, the discovery of the right drug is only half the battle; its successful development is equally critical. Because of this, pharma companies are continually looking for cost-effective outsourcing arrangements in order to better manage the drug discovery project and reduce overall investment. Thus, outsourced drug discovery process has become a key strategy adopted by numerous biotechnological plants across the globe.

Most pharmaceutical firms outsource various portions of their drug discovery projects to established CROs to maximize the overall output from the effort. For instance, in clinical trials, biotechnological firms often outsource the analysis, administration, management, and financial services to the contract research firms. Likewise, to develop new drugs, biotechnological firms often contract the drug discovery process to well-established biotech/venture pharmaceutical firms. By outsourcing several key parts of the drug discovery process, biotechnological firms have discovered an efficient cost-saving strategy that enables them to effectively and efficiently complete clinical trials and also minimize the risk of developing an unsuccessful compound.

CROs manage almost all aspects of drug discovery, such as data entry and validation, clinical data management, medicine and disease coding, validation programming, quality and metric reporting, statistical analysis plans and reports, safety and efficacy summaries, and final report. Thus, pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies are increasingly adopting outsourced drug discovery services to reduce their expenses. A few services that are gaining popularity among these firms include formulation development, clinical trials management, API manufacturing, analytical and testing services, and solid dose manufacturing.

Pharma and biotech companies are outsourcing research activities to both private and academic contract research organizations (CROs) as a strategy to stay competitive and flexible.