Enabling Science at Scale: How Danaher Life Sciences partners deep with Biopharma
The demand for advanced therapeutics and new drug modalities is expected to explode in the coming decade. For example, more than 2,000 gene therapies and modified cell therapies are currently under development, along with 800-plus non-genetically modified cell therapies, according to the American Society of Gene & Cell Therapy. And the development pipeline for monoclonal antibodiesgrew about 20% in 2022 to include 140 investigational drugs, estimates the Antibody Society.
While this is good news for patients awaiting treatments for complex diseases, it presents an immediate scalability challenge to biopharma leaders – one that University of Pennsylvania professor and CAR-T pioneer Dr. Carl June has referred to as a crisis waiting to happen. “My big worry is, what if we actually make … engineered cell therapies work for solid cancer?” June said during the Danaher Genomic Medicines Summit held in December 2022 in Boston. “We just couldn’t meet the demand at this point.”
Indeed, biopharma leaders that are developing cell therapies and other potential cures for large patient populations will need to address bottlenecks in their research, development, and manufacturing processes to meet the expected demand.
Several Life Sciences companies at Danaher Corporation, such as Molecular Devices, Leica Microsystems, SCIEX, IDBS, Beckman Coulter Life Sciences, Aldevron, and Cytiva, offer a wide array of products and services to support the biopharma industry at the point solution level, the automation level, and the data and digitization level. Together they help the industry to embrace an approach that combines scientific rigor with engineering know-how to create stronger innovation. This entails bolstering every stage of biopharma development with engineering principles and practices. Applying this approach will require biopharma developers to adopt automation at every stage, from early discovery through manufacturing, and to lean on artificial intelligence to improve their processes. And it will demand that best practices be industrialized to improve and accelerate the innovation of new cures.
Danaher Life Sciences partners deep with biopharma companies like Sanofi to help solve the oldest and most vexing challenges in biopharma: the high rate of failure of drugs that look promising in phase 1 trials but never make it to market, and the excessive time it takes to discover new medicines and deliver them to patients.
About the Author
Vanessa Almendro, Ph.D, MBA, is Vice President of Science and Technology, Head of Innovation at Danaher Corporation, leading multiple initiatives to position Danaher at the forefront of innovation in science, technology, and medicine. Vanessa is also the Founder and Principal for the Brain Cancer Investment Fund, a philanthropic fund aiming at catalyzing the development of cures for brain cancer. Prior to Danaher, Vanessa was the Head of External Strategy and Innovation at the Eisai Center for Genetics Guided Dementia Discovery (G2D2). In this role, Vanessa led the creation of the Eisai Innovation Center Biolabs, the first incubator space specialized in neurology. She also led the development of academic affairs and external innovation strategies in concert with academic investigators, consortiums, biotech, and large pharmaceutical companies. Prior to this role, Vanessa worked as Head of Strategy and Operations for Cogen Immune Medicines, and she held multiple leadership roles at Vertex Pharmaceuticals both in the R&D and Commercial organizations. Prior to industry Vanessa was a Research fellow at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Harvard Medical School and prior to that served as a Group Leader in the Department of Medical Oncology at IDIBAPS in Barcelona, Spain. Vanessa is a Ph.D. in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology from University of Barcelona, a Post-doc in Translational Medicine from the Dana Farber Cancer Institute, Harvard Medical School, and an Executive MBA from MIT-Sloan. She is a mentor for start-up companies at MassConnect, Nucleate Boston Activator, and a member of the Commercial Advisory Board for the School of Biomedical Engineering at UBC.