Biotech/Pharma Competitive Intelligence
Introduction
A significant chunk of my job in business development entails competitive intelligence and I’ve found the lack of biotech/pharmaceutical specific guide in this area a bit distressing. In that vein, I’ve tried to compile a guide / list of services and hacks I currently use to keep up on the industry in general and find relevant information for partnering our programs. This list is by no means the only or best way to accomplish these tasks… just the way I currently use them. Suggestions?
$$ Databases
With the convenience comes a price. I have no idea how much we pay per seat for any of these and I’m sure I’d be appalled to know so I’ll stay blissfully ignorant. Essentially, 95% of the information contained in these databases is publicly available and you pay for ease, time-savings, context and linkability.
- ThomsonPharma/Integrity: I consider these (Thomson recently purchased Integrity) to be the 800lb gorilla of hyperlinked pharmaceutical information. The lag time from company press release or presentation of data, to inclusion of data is decent (sometimes a day or two, other times it can take a month). The real value though, is in the manipulation of information, automatic updates and the degree of connectivity they display. With a few clicks, you can find related patents, proposed chemical structures and sales number for all compounds for an indication or mechanism of action. While they lack true natural language searching they are loaded with nice, but mostly superfluous visual effects and contain the ability to create mostly useless charts on the fly.
- Recombinant Capital: Database of biopharma alliance information. Quite useful for deal information, contract language and tracking the flow of cash for financing rounds and milestone payments.
- Datamonitor: Need a 180 page report on fragile X syndrome with 8 year market projections?… this is your site. Their numbers projections shouldn’t be taken as the gospel and sometimes the reports aren’t updated as quickly as I’d like, but as for finding a critical mass of statistical information about a topic including a market summary, SWOT analysis, disease briefing and pipeline review, a Datamonitor report can’t be beat.
Publicly Available Sources
Google Searching
In the internet age, where everything can be found through Google, it pays to know how to search and how to refine your searches by using operaors to find that needle in a haystack. You can find a two page cheat sheet here but I can’t resist showing the few that I use with regularity:
- [herbs -basil]: all pages with the word “herbs” but not “basil.” Helpful for reducing the number of results
- [searchtermshere site:www.yourwebsitehere.com]: Searches only the website you chose for relevant information.
- [searchtermshere filetype:pdf]: good for finding pfds, word, ppt files associated with a company or drug of interest. Really useful when using with “site:” trick above.
I’m an engineer by training, which means I’m pretty lazy and I’d never do something repetitively that I can get a computer to do for me. In this vein, let me tell you about Google Alerts. Google allows you to save searches that it will then run automagically and send an update should anything change. If nothing changes, you don’t get an email. It is that simple and simply fantastic. Want to know whenever FTY720 is in the news? Set up an alert to email you. You have to be kind of clever about how you word your searches (great opportunity to use the techniques above) so that you don’t get overwhelmed with emails but if you do it correctly, the signal to noise ratio should be acceptable.
Clinical Trial Information
Looking for clinical trial information? Clinicaltrials.gov, WHO trial search or Centerwatch should do the trick.
Currently Approved Drug Information
- To find drug pricing information I use: Drugstore or RegenceRx
- Patent expiry information: The Orange Book
- Patent searching: USPTO, WIPO
- FDA/Regulatory approval docs (literally thousands of pages of potentially useful information): Drugs@FDA
Company Research
- To track company filings in an automated fashion I use SECInfo.com and subscribe the the filings of companies I am interested in. Every time they file a doc with the SEC, it gets dropped into my inbox. Signal to noise is pretty low but occasionally I’ll get lucky by spotting an updated S1-A, tracking an IPO or even just tracking latest earnings results. This service also lets you search the EDGAR database so instead of heading to the SEC site, I usually just go here.
