The pharmaceutical industry is in the early stages of a major structural transformation. Pharma companies are transitioning to a business model in which little drug research is done in their own laboratories. Pharma researchers still manage drug projects, but the laboratory research is increasingly accomplished with the help of thousands of external Contract Research Organizations (CROs). Pharma managers still conduct the orchestra; they just no longer play many of the instruments. On the one hand, this structural change has led to massive job cuts within the pharmaceutical industry, which has long been a primary source of jobs for new chemistry graduates. At the same time, the creation of a large and distributed ecosystem of CROs and research marketplaces, like Assay Depot, has created an opportunity for chemists to build innovative startup companies that were unthinkable ten years ago. For example, running a drug research program used to require the coordinated effort of hundreds of researchers. Today, a handful of experienced drug hunters (or even a single scientist) can create a virtual pharma company capable of going from concept to clinic with only a small lab or no lab whatsoever. Or, if you are not a drug hunter but can provide chemistry services, it's now easy to build a low-cost CRO that uses shared equipment at a community lab or startup incubator. In an interesting twist on this idea, some chemists are successfully running virtual CROs by marketing chemistry services on research marketplaces and then using other CROs to do the actual lab work. In an increasingly globalized and knowledge-based economy, traditional chemistry career paths in pharma and academia are drying up. Yet, there has never been a better time to translate your experience, expertise and passion into a chemistry startup company that make a difference.

Chemistry start-up companies in the networked science era

248th National Meeting (2014)

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