When former NIH head Elias Zerhouni ran the $30 billion federal research institute, he pushed for so-called translational research in which findings from basic lab research would be used to develop medicines and other applications that would help patients directly. Now the head of R&D at French drug maker Sanofi , Zerhouni says that such “bench to bedside” research is more difficult than he thought. When he arrived at Sanofi, “I thought the solution would be simple,” Zerhouni said at a recent R&D press event attended by the Health Blog. He thought the answer to the company’s R&D woes was to make it more creative and more nimble, like a small biotech. But he realized that small biotechs are no more successful than large drug makers at coming up with new drugs. “At the end of the day, there’s a gap in translation,” he said. While at the NIH, Zerhouni witnessed a lot of progress in basic science that had implications for human health. But those findings weren’t being translated because clinician-scientists weren’t receiving the right training, he said. At pharma companies, most R&D scientists are too isolated — they talk primarily to

those within their own company — and the experimental therapies that companies are developing are created without enough communication with the doctors who actually treat patients. There needs to be a “re-do” in pharma R&D, Zerhouni said. At Sanofi, the goal now is to strive for “open innovation,” which involves looking for new research and ideas both internally and externally — for example, at universities and hospitals. In addition, the company is focusing on first understanding a disease and then figuring out what tools might be effective in treating it, rather than identifying a potential tool first and then looking for a disease area in which it could be helpful. In addition, last year the company cut the number of projects in its portfolio by about half, to around 60, so it could focus on those that have the greatest potential to meet medical objectives, commercial return and are clinically feasible, according to Paul Chew , U.S. Sanofi’s chief medical and scientific officer. Bonus: Former Merck Head Vagelos Says NIH Should Stick to Basic Research Image: Bloomberg News

See the original post here: 
Sanofi’s Zerhouni On Translational Research: No Simple Solution