Novartis employs 5,200 scientists and invests $3.6 billion annually in research, says Dr. Tamar Alon, global head of early strategic partnerships and external innovation at Novartis, adding that in recent years, several platforms have been launched for collaboration with academic researchers.
“Our scientists determine who is interesting.”
“We have created a network called Novartis Global Scholars, with the participation of 60 institutions from 13 countries, including Israel. Over the past four years, we have issued four calls for proposals for special projects in scientific areas of strategic importance to the company, and as a result, we have selected twenty academic collaborations.” “We invested about $1 million each in them, and they have already resulted in scientific articles.”
Another program aims to proactively map global science, with the help of Novartis scientists. “Our scientists identify the most interesting entities to collaborate, and we offer them a fairly long-term program to discover products and insights with us. We are looking for global stars, pioneers in their fields, who also think creatively.”
In another program, the Early Impact Fund, the company selects projects and invests 50% of the scientific activity budget. In its first year of activity alone, Novartis signed five such collaboration agreements.
Alon listed areas in which the company is looking for academic collaboration, including metabolic, autoimmune and neurological diseases, and also identified a growth area in which Novartis has not yet been established: DAx: exploratory research for serious and sometimes rare diseases for which there is a cure. There is currently no treatment, especially for kidney and liver diseases, and degenerative diseases associated with aging.
“Collecting information and drawing conclusions”
Speaking in a video lecture, Dr. Evan M. Beckman, Global Head of Translational Medicine at Novartis Biomedical Research Institutes, shed light on the research activity taking place within the company itself. His department is responsible for collecting accumulated research knowledge and considering how to translate it into medicine.
“We are in the midst of a program called data42, which is designed to bring together all the data that we have from clinical trials, as well as information from monitoring the use of our drugs in the real world, and information from the public domain, in order to draw conclusions, for example, what causes “If something goes wrong in the trial or which trial sites are the most effective,” he said, adding that the company is currently examining wearable devices for use in measuring the effectiveness of the treatment.
Beckman also talked about a major technological breakthrough. Until now, the molecular understanding within the pharmaceutical sector has been that some cellular receptors (proteins) are inaccessible by chemotherapeutics, making these drug therapies unsuitable. “Today, there are technologies that make it possible to influence a protein remotely, by binding to a site other than the affected site.” “In this way, we can attack many types of diseases using classical small molecules.”
Novartis and Globes collaborated to cover the conference in accordance with editorial standards and considerations that are important to Globes readers. The conference was held in collaboration with health technology and life sciences investment fund aMoon and Startup Nation Central.