New venture a ‘game-changer’ for pharma
pharmafile | October 25, 2011 | News story | Research and Development | Sir Christopher Evans, drug development
Sir Christopher Evans is looking to create a new venture that aims to improve on the drug development productivity of big pharma.
The biotech pioneer has created NCPharma, and is looking for an initial $750 million to finance the acquisition of early stage molecules from pharma’s pipelines.
NCPharma will develop the drugs and then sell them back to the pharma firms once they have shown significant clinical value.
Evans is best known as a venture capital leader, but is now looking to make a success of a new business model. NCPharma will be a bricks and mortar pharma company, but will have no drug discovery or sales and marketing functions, and will focus exclusively on in-licensing and drug development.
One person close to the venture told Sky News that NCPharma represents “a game-changing concept for an industry facing huge challenges and rising R&D costs”.
NCPharma will look to make a minimum 28% internal rate of return “where the translational development success of its portfolio is not correlated to the financial markets”, according to a factsheet seen by investors.
Sir Chris, who already owns venture group Merlin Biosciences, is looking to raise billions to finance the acquisition plans, but already has generated interest among the bigger pharma firms.
Sir Richard Skyes, the former chairman of GlaxoSmithKline, is believed to become the new chair of the venture.
The other industry executives involved in NCPharma are Dr Steven Paul, formerly of Eli Lilly; Professor Trevor Jones of the Wellcome Foundation, Dr Bob Ruffolo, previously of Wyeth; and ex Sandoz chief executive Dr Max Link.
The firm is already thought to have secured agreements with Merck to licence dozens of its products and the initial $750 million it is looking for will be used to acquire the 32 clinical compounds from Merck’s portfolio.
The firm is also now in talks with several other big pharma firms, including J&J and Pfizer, which means it could develop as many as 150 drug compounds within the next five years if it gains the investment it needs, according to Sky News.
Major investment
But NCPharma will require billions in finance to acquire further portfolios, and it is understood that the firm is in talks with sovereign wealth funds in Abu Dhabi and Qatar to help with the required investment.
Evans believes NCPharma can succeed where big pharma has failed because it will be “completely focused on clinical development of new pharmaceuticals and will not be affected by major overhead nor distracted by large corporate infrastructure, early research, large scale manufacture nor marketing activities,” according to the Sky News.
“It would licence-in only the best quality, premier drug portfolios from big pharma and biotech companies to develop in its unique, low-risk model.”
Evans is believed to be looking to make the venture public by 2016 and could be valued at several billion pounds.
When contacted Evans and the pharma firms believed to be involved all declined to comment.
Ben Adams
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