More news of layoffs in the pharma industry today. Big Pharma are shedding scientists to reduce
expenses as patent cliffs approach, compounds fail in late stage clinical
trials, and pipelines dry up. Even
smaller companies like Alnylam and Scynexis are reducing their already lean
workforce to focus resources on their most promising opportunities. A recent
report in Motley
Fool (No Vacancy: Workers Need Not Apply to This Sector) paints a grim
picture of the near future for the industry as a whole. But what really happens to the tens of
thousands of displaced scientists? Where
do they go, what do they do? I suspect
that some get hired by another pharma, only to be let go again as Shrinking
Workforce Syndrome makes the rounds. Some probably find other niche areas in
science outside of the lab. Some may
leverage know-how and even unwanted IP to start small companies.
The reality is that it takes a critical mass of scientific
resources to fill a pipeline, and while not all of the pharma cuts have been in
research, it does beg the question: who will discover the medicines of the
future? Even more importantly, with potentially
far fewer scientific resources on the task, HOW will future drug discovery
happen? Surely this is not business as
usual, and the time for a new way of thinking about how to capitalize on the
scientific expertise that has been decentralized through corporate downsizing
is at hand. A distributed model where
science happens through crowdsourcing, collaboration, open science, and an
evolution of academic science centers needs to be explored and embraced. Times
of change present great opportunity to challenge the status quo and crank up
innovation.
