I grew up in commercial in Roche big pharma for many years. I was committed and passionate for the success of the company, but I experienced at first hand the issues from suboptimal clinical development.

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In my experience through the 80’s and early 90’s in Roche HQ, oncology clinical trials were not well designed and executed, “compassionate use” was resultant regulatory dossiers were poor and so products were too late to be early in the drug class. Roche Affiliates were despairing of the HQ output. The result was obvious in declining revenue and the company was slipping down the global rankings and risked exiting the Top 10.

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In my last four years in Roche in the early 90’s, when Amgen was a partner, I proposed that we move from their silo-based drug development to the principles of the “Thriving on Chaos” (Tom Peters) through creation of a venture team.

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I was given Pharma Board approval and led what we named the Amgen-Roche Venture Team to bring Neupogen® (Filgrastim, G-CSF) from end of Phase II to all Roche and Amgen markets.

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In four thriving- on- chaos-  years, the small team worked in a very complex partner relationship: Amgen HQ and affiliates –  Roche HQ – Roche affiliates, taking filgrastim through two Phase III trials, through production in Roche, through regulatory as one of the first drugs through the centralised EU regulatory process, through pre-commercialisation against GM-CSF, and through national regulatory with 80 national launches by  launch year plus four years .

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Neupogen has changed the delivery of conventional chemotherapy, it is revolutionising high-dose chemotherapy, and made peak sales of $4 billion a year, to be a driver of the growth of Amgen.

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We had to set the goal of being first CSF to market that could not be missed, and with the addition of the highest quality at the core of all we did, as to hit the time goal and fail on quality or not meeting market need would be a fail.

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We were budget rich and resource poor. We worked as a small cross-functional team: everyone who joined made a personal commitment to the team as it was not about our own enrichment – we avoided working in a box called a job description – we worked without a CRO – we used experienced resources we could contract.

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