Posted by on October 16th, 2016.
Blue Matter worked with a mid-sized oncology organization to help develop a robust disease area and portfolio strategy to support the evolution of its oncology franchise towards global leadership.
Companies need to take appropriate risks to grow and become market leaders. The risk associated with a failed growth strategy is especially costly in the biopharmaceutical industry. As such, these companies need to be deliberate in the type of risks they take on. Very often companies have a hard time discontinuing internal projects and re-allocating those resources towards other attractive assets or investments that may have been developed outside the company. In some cases, companies have a plethora of internal candidates to select from and find it difficult to identify and prioritize the most attractive assets. On the other extreme, some companies have very lean internal pipelines and are looking for external assets or collaborations for investment. Blue Matter has worked with companies in each of these situations with developing a franchise and/or portfolio strategy. These projects typically involve an in-depth external and internal assessment, followed by setting the overall vision and goals for the franchise with a final phase of developing the recommendations for external investment or partnerships as well as internal project prioritization.
In this particular example, Blue Matter conducted extensive research to develop an in-depth understanding of the oncology development landscape, including identifying the research and technology platforms of interest, as well as the tumor types that may be most relevant for development for the client company. This was done in parallel to an independent assessment of the company’s internal product pipeline. We then worked with the cross-functional leadership team to develop a vision and goals for the oncology franchise in the context of the overall company goals, as well as specific recommendations for internal development and external licensing and collaboration based on the outputs of the first phase. As a final step in the project, we worked with the company’s business development team to identify specific product candidates for in-licensing.