arrangements in the Pharma and Biotech Industry
W.O.C.P. MEMBER BENEFITS |
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By becoming a member of W.O.C.P., your organization and yourself, plus any additional members that choose to become members can benefit from the current and future initiatives of W.O.C.P., including:
Comprehensive company / organization overview included in W.O.C.P.'s Directory of Members; a description of your activities that allows you to chose exactly what you wish to include, in the format you prefer.
- Inclusion of ALL the projects or services that you wish to either offer for collaboration or types of opportunities that you seek to find; for example, this facilitates collaborations by describing what you wish to offer (whether it is a development compound, a marketed product, a technology or a service, e.g. legal, CRO, Consultancy, etc.). In addition, this also allows to outline what type of products or services you have an interest in finding. For example, to allow a more efficient approach, pharma and biotech companies can list the therapeutic areas of interest, territories of first priority and development stage of products that are most appealing to acquire.
- Contact details of as many offices or people as you wish, with optional information such as the areas of interest of each contact.
W.O.C.P. membership supports your chances of creating corporate collaborations with other organizations through identifying potential new products, technologies or services in your areas of interest, offering your products, technologies or services to potential partners, increasing your organization's exposure internationally, with a focus on collaborations, facilitating communication between pharma companies, biotech companies as well as key service providers and reaching potential partners. In addition, you can take advantage of W.O.C.P.'s e-mail newsletters, reaching thousands of people responsible for collaborations in their own organizations.
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Industry Developments
The past few years have seen the pharmaceutical industry undergo more change than ever with consolidation creating fewer and larger companies. Cost/benefit ratio awareness and cost-containment by government reforms, market economics, decrease in the number of new drugs being discovered by the large corporations have increased the pressure in the industry and have led to alliances surging to the point that most pharmaceutical companies see each other as potential partners; a remarkably different view compared to the doing business 10-15 years ago.
In the pharmaceutical industry, shareholder value has become not only the top but almost the exclusive priority, driving the market dynamics accordingly. Following maturity of many of the innovative product classes and companies' expansion in new geographic markets, top-line growth became too modest to excite analysts and this has been coupled by pressures to drive down costs on behalf of governments in many countries, most notably in Europe and Japan, where prices of pharmaceutical products have remained flat for years or even decreased. The industry responded to this financial drive by seemingly the easiest route: Consolidation & Alliances.
On the Biotech side, the sector has been the recipient of a tremendous outflow from the pharma industry, both in terms of Intellectual Property as well as experienced and innovative people. This resulted in a biotech "Boom" primarily between 1994-1997 as the people who continued to leave the big pharma companies managed to raise Venture Capital and create biotech start-ups, some of which have now become very successful public companies. Later developments in the global economy and failures in product development among some key biotech companies led to the Capitals Markets drying in 1998-1999 simultaneously followed by a VC shift in 1998-2000, initially into what were thought as better investments, the "dot.com" companies. Between 2000-2004, the harsh world economics have created tough financial conditions in the biotech sector, with difficulties accessing the public markets, leading to a lack of Venture Capital. In the current environment, industry collaborations are in great demand from both sides and the trend seems to continue. Collaborations are a source of financing, validating technologies, compounds and companies, augmenting pipelines, increase sales and profits and provide synergies in R&D. In addition, collaborations are typically reversible activities, allowing both sides to terminate the partnership under certain adverse conditions, compared to M&A transactions that once executed, can not be changed.
W.O.C.P. was set up to support collaborative arrangements in the Pharma and Biotech Industry.
