J&J and Actelion point to the industry’s future (CNBC, Scrip)

The recent J&J-Actelion deal is great for the pharmaceutical industry, reminding us all of how valuable the capabilities to continuously convert drug discovery activities into fantastic medicines really are.

As well as appearing on CNBC on the morning of the deal (video below) to explain this perspective, John Rountree was extensively quoted in Scrip’s analysis of the J&J/Actelion deal. John described Actelion’s strategy as “a great example of creating a structure to defragment R&D – companies that bring together science, commercial insight and medical skills on a continuous basis, like Actelion did and the R&D NewCo now will, rather than one-shot virtual biotechs”, adding “It will also power up Actelion’s commercialization by having a large and well-funded owner that has access to the important US capital market.”

John also raised the broader implications for the industry, saying “This case really challenges how to think about the value of R&D. It’s a great wakeup call to the industry of the value of really good research and development. And what it shows is that stock market analysts have traditionally not valued discovery assets or discovery capabilities within an organization, because it’s too far away timewise and it’s difficult to affix financial numbers to. The people who really can do strong drug discovery can free the drug discovery from the constraints of being tied to only certain therapeutic areas. That has been the ethos of Actelion – they will go out after where the mechanism of discovery takes them, which is a very powerful ethos in today’s pharmaceutical industry.”