The New Pfizer Research Strategy: Openness And Collaboration Replace The Old Imperial Model

By Wayne Koberstein, contributing editor

To any veteran observer, the words coming out of Pfizer research these days could stretch credulity. Words like “open” and “collaboration” were seldom heard throughout most of the company’s buy-it-when-you-need-it-but-go-italone history — until recently.

In the past few years, the company radically overhauled its internal R&D organization. It slashed jobs, hired new research leadership, and cast its fate on external sources of new products, starting at the key transition from drug discovery to development. It also organized the four contemporary arms of biomedical research — proteins, small molecules, oncology drugs, and vaccines — into four separate but collaborative divisions, all united at the level of discovery, where the BioTherapeutics Research & Development Group, headed by Senior VP Jose-Carlos Gutiérrez-Ramos, plays a leading role.