Selectively leveraging the capabilities and expertise of contract research organizations (CROs) has become an integral part of many agrochemical and pharmaceutical companies' research strategies. Initially, CROs provided support in the form of research services, such as biological assay development, scale-up, combinatorial library production, clinical trials, and synthetic route optimization, which were outsourced on a contract basis. CROs range in size from large, international full-service organizations to small, specializing niche groups. Recently, some companies and CROs have joined forces by entering into true collaboration, in which the parties bring divergent expertise and share risk to achieve a common but aggressive goal. An overview of these risk-sharing collaborations will be the focus of this talk. Topics, such as when and why this type of collaboration may be favored over the more routine fee-for-service arrangement; attributes of a successful CRO partnership; and the strengths and weaknesses of large and niche CROs will be discussed, including case studies.

Accelerating discovery through risk-sharing collaborations

246th National Meeting (2013)

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