Company News

Alternatives to the integrated pharmaceutical company business model are taking hold as smaller players contribute to the industry’s value chain. PharmaVoice recently interviewed Mazen Skaf, TRACON’s Chief Business Officer, on the rise of the alternative model and how TRACON’s own hybrid strategy addresses the challenges emerging companies face today. Skaf’s comments were featured in a roundtable discussion in PharmaVoice’s May issue.

A Model for Success
By Denise Myshko
May 2006

Excerpted from full article, available here

TRACON Pharma, an emerging biotech company targeting cancer therapies, is another company that is following a hybrid model. The company plans to take a dual approach: partnering with companies or licensing out compounds as well as taking some compounds through to commercialization.

“The development-only business model is just one arm of our hybrid strategy,” says Mazen Skaf, Ph.D., chief business officer of TRACON Pharmaceuticals Inc. “We do intend to commercialize certain products in our portfolio where we would have a clear advantage or can be on par with the best in the industry to commercialize those products. The main determinant is the value strategy for each specific therapeutic. For products that can be marketed and sold by targeting a small number of prescribers and key opinion leaders, TRACON will lead the launch and commercialization.”

He says companies need to have a robust strategy that will enable them to manage development, regulatory, and commercial risks and carry them through the changes in the industry environment.

“An independent study conducted by SDG, a management consulting firm, and further corroborated by TRACON Pharma’s own analysis has shown that, among companies with revenue below $3 billion, there is an advantage for companies that have a development focus on one or two therapeutic areas,” he says. “In fact, among companies with annual sales below $3 billion those that focus on one or at most two therapeutic areas have outperformed their peers in the number of NMEs launched.”

Read the full article here