Ted Torphy, vice-president of Johnson & Johnson has called for increased innovation to drive the pharmaceutical industry forward.
According to the J&J chief, conventional research at present employs stringent measures to protect results as intellectual property until a marketable compound is achieved. As a result, companies are unable to share findings with each other, hindering drug development.
Speaking at the next-generation pharmaceutical drug discovery summit in Vienna, he proposed the idea of “temporary partnerships” to combat an innovation deficit, which is causing lab productivity to fall.
“The innovation deficit has enormous implications for the industry as a whole. Many pharmaceutical companies need to look at what they want to be doing and where they should be concentrating,” he said.
This view was shared at the summit by representatives of AstraZeneca and GlaxoSmithKline, which also called for open collaborations and the sharing of intelligent property.
