Novartis Slashes 20% of R&D Programs
After completing a portfolio review, Novartis has dropped around 20% of its R&D projects as it narrows its focus to the most cutting-edge medicines. Jay Bradner, president of the Novartis Institutes for Biomedical Research, said the substance programs will shrink to 340 from 430. Among the 90 projects no longer being pursued are treatments for infectious diseases.
The cuts are believed to reflect new CEO Vas Narasimhan’s efforts to make the Swiss drugmaker more competitive in view of soaring development costs climb and declining returns on investment.
In a recent interview with the Bloomberg news agency, Bradner, who joined Novartis in 2016 from Harvard Medical School and the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute said the “sadness” about the abandoned projects is that while many of them have momentum, they either are not likely to be transformative for patients or they are ill-suited to the focused business ambitions of Novartis.
“Society should expect Novartis to bring forward truly impactful, truly differentiated, truly important medicines for patients with life-threatening diseases,” the research manager said, adding that some of the discarded projects may be picked up by other drugmakers.
The Swiss group is now looking to expand in areas including cell and gene therapies to build on its purchase of drugmaker AveXis earlier this year and the launch of its breakthrough cancer treatment Kymriah. In October, Novartis licensed to Boston Pharmaceuticals three programs to find new drugs to treat antibiotic-resistant infections.
