Optimizing Outsourcing in Early Small Molecule Drug Discovery

A Dotmatics report based on a commissioned study to explore trends and needs in Biotech–CRO collaborations

Outsourcing to contract research organizations (CROs) has been a strategic way for companies to navigate rising costs, waning funding options, and growing layoffs

From 2015 to 2021, NME approvals for companies with revenues less than $1 billion grew from 8% to 30%, a percentage nearly equal to the share held by companies whose revenues exceed $10 billion.[1] But challenging this momentum are a number of obstacles, including rising costs, waning funding options, and growing layoffs.

For many companies, outsourcing to contract research organizations (CROs) has been a strategic way to navigate these challenges. While biotech-CRO relationships at the clinical stage are both well established and well scrutinized, there has been limited exploration of how to optimize earlydiscovery engagements.

To remedy this, Dotmatics commissioned a survey from C&EN BrandLab about outsourced small-molecule-drug-discovery projects. This document includes results from that survey as well as other sources. The survey results show that while compound synthesis is the primary earlydiscovery task outsourced, biotechs are increasingly turning to multiple CROs for help in additional areas, such as drug metabolism and pharmacokinetic studies, as well as toxicology and safety assessment and more.

The survey also highlights the need for solutions to help optimize biotech-CRO collaboration, with both bio-company and service-provider respondents citing datamanagement solutions as their top need.

Overview

Strategic outsourcing in early discovery can be optimized by improving project-data exchange. A secure client-provider portal can address many of the challenges biopharmas and CROs face around submitting requests, monitoring projects, and delivering and leveraging results.

Key Findings

Biopharmas commonly engage multiple service providers for outsourced projects, which are predominated by small molecule synthesis, drug metabolism and pharmacokinetics studies, and toxicology and safety assessment.

Project-monitoring and data-review tasks monopolize much of the time spent on outsourced projects.

Data-exchange processes are largely rudimentary, but while acknowledged as a top need by biopharma and providers, there was minimal insight into vendors who could help improve data-management processes during early discovery outsourcing.

Recommendations

To optimize outsourcing relationships, biopharmas and service providers engaged in early drug discovery projects should:

Streamline commonly outsourced tasks, such as synthesis or DMPK analysis, by submitting requests and returning results in a united system.

Reduce time spent on project monitoring, report creation/review, and communications by tracking all outsourced projects in a secure project portal that keeps diverse stakeholders informed with up-to-date results and reports.

Directly exchange data from outsourced projects via a secure data-exchange portal, which keeps data current, accurate, and ready for secondary use—all without the timesink of reformatting and transferring data manually.