Partnerships 2010: The Arranged Marriage: Living with an Outsourcing Partner You Had No Role in Choosing

Panelists: Lynn McGovern, Director, Strategic Sourcing, MILLENNIUM: THE TAKEDA ONCOLOGY COMPANY
Pamela Wohlberg, Clinical Head, Development Strategic Sourcing, NOVARTIS PHARMACEUTICALS CORPORATION
Michael Cox, Manager, Resource Performance Management, MEDIMMUNE

Sometimes you just have to make it work despite initial misgivings. This was the message of the discussion by three sourcing representatives of big pharma companies. Lynn McGowan of Millennium, Pamela Wohlberg and Michael Cox of Medimmune talked about how their companies inherited partnerships through mergers, licensing agreements and co-development.

When Takeda acquired Millennium, the latter inherited new molecules and active projects, including the CROs. Due to differences in how each company did business before the acquisition, there were some initial disconnects. For example, Takeda was used to keeping project management in-house, while Millennium typically outsourced. Different data management systems (Rave vs. Inform) caused some confusion as well. The results of these disconnects were missed deadlines, data issues and a lack of understanding of the larger picture.

To begin to mitigate some of the issues, Millennium and their CRO invested in and committed to successful resolution and got high level people involved, brought in project management resources and re-established joint expectations. Lessons learned: treat a new relationship as a new project and an inherited partner as an intended partner.

When Novartis acquired Chiron in 2006, Chiron had several CRO providers including one large service agreement for global services on a large trial. Novartis inherited a negative scenario where relationships were strained. Challenges included a lack of clarity and specificity in the partner agreement about roles and deliverables. Communication had broken down between parties.

Novartis tackled the issues by setting up a two-day kickoff meeting, establishing new expectations and a full review of assumptions, budget and progress and plans to date. The outcome was a set of amendments to the contract to capture new expectations. All of this contributed to an improvement in the relationship and positive outcomes to the active projects.

MedImmune’s experience with an inherited CRO came via a licensing agreement. In this scenario all companies still have active relationships among all parties which can quickly become complicated and grow the web of contacts exponentially. CROs tend to be caught in the middle, as one sponsor’s processes or audit activities hold up the other sponsor.

Despite the challenges of these “arranged marriages,” positive outcomes can be achieved primarily through rebooting the relationship and giving the proper attention and care to learning about the new mutual partners.