Experts Statements: Prof. Jochen Maas, Sanofi-Aventis Deutschland
Despite tremendous challenges facing the pharmaceutical industry, it continues with its commitment to innovation and the discovery of novel drugs to address unmet medical needs. Indeed, medicinal chemists face a challenge of their own. Trying to survive in a changing environment where pharma is focusing on biologics drug candidates will require chemists to adapt.
CHEManager International asked R&D experts of chemical and pharmaceutical companies to elaborate on their research strategy and share their opinion with our readers. In detail, we interviewed professionals ranging from CEOs to heads of R&D and process development about:
The crucial success factors in chemical and pharmaceutical research.
Prof. Jochen Maas: The crucial factor in chemical research will be people — well-educated and with the right empathy and motivation for research. Those people have to be brought together independently of their organizations — academia, industry or biotech. And this requires new and innovative ideas of collaboration, which have already started to be implemented.
“The crucial factor … will be
people — well-educated and
with the right empathy and
motivation for research.”
Prof. Jochen Maas,
Head R&D FF,
Sanofi-Aventis Deutschland
The role of information technology tools in developing reaction routes and processes.
Prof. Jochen Maas: The role of software tools to predict and develop reaction routes and processes for given target molecules depends on the research area: A lot of processes already can be predicted quite accurately by in silico approaches — e.g., absorption. Other areas like metabolism will require much more effort to achieve a similar level.
Challenges and changes affecting the work of R&D chemists in the future.
Prof. Jochen Maas: R&D chemists will have to be extremely flexible in the future: At least industry preferences for specific modalities — like small molecules, peptides, proteins, oligonucleotides — will probably change much more rapidly than in the past.
