Overview
Increasing competition from brands, generics and biosimilars, coupled with new requirements for customer engagement and support of novel chemical and molecular platforms, is making it imperative for life sciences companies to take a strategic approach to drug delivery. Disruption is also on the horizon in the form of digitization, consumer health and payer engagement. While drug delivery was once viewed as a matter of implementation, the challenges our life sciences clients are facing in the evolving future have elevated drug delivery to a critical area for off-molecule innovation.
At L.E.K., we help life science leadership from biopharma to formulation and device technology providers develop pragmatic approaches to innovation in the drug delivery space.
How we help
Small, midsize and large multinational life sciences companies routinely engage us to:
- Develop innovation roadmaps: We help our clients expand into new technology opportunities in drug delivery and identify strategic partnering opportunities. We support our opportunity screening with rigorous research and a deep understanding of end-user needs. Our technology strategies apply to both biopharma users in need of drug delivery innovation for their portfolios and technology developers looking to meet customer needs and effectively compete.
- Support strategic assessments and transaction: We support our clients in screening for, characterizing, assessing and valuing drug delivery technology opportunities. We have helped our clients through the difficult business cases required to support novel drug delivery development — from formulation libraries to lifecycle management (LCM) device enhancements. Our strategic assessments give management the confidence needed to commit to off-molecule innovation.
- Implement drug delivery innovation strategies: We help R&D, operations and commercial groups realize their vision for drug delivery innovation. Whether it’s planning and launching an innovation center, understanding manufacturing implications, or sourcing subcomponents and engineering options for platforms in development, we bring a structured approach to implementation that is always tuned to specific client needs. Our clients come to us looking for pragmatic, bespoke solutions that help them meet their objectives, timelines, budgets and global versus regional requirements.
Examples of our work
We have helped companies across several life sciences sectors establish drug delivery strategies and change their business models to drive products/franchise growth and operational efficiency.
- Transformative technology strategy: A leading global biopharmaceutical company needed to integrate off-molecule innovation into a coherent roadmap and strategy to support its growing pipeline dependencies in drug delivery. L.E.K. structured and analyzed the landscape, mapped technologies to use cases and portfolio requirements, and profiled specific opportunities for platforms. This led to specific investments and a framework for drug delivery innovation that have led to multiple differentiated platform launches.
- Optimizing an innovation center: A large global biopharma had established a mandate and plan for opening a drug delivery innovation center. Senior management wanted to understand the value proposition and specific areas of focus. L.E.K. developed a framework for understanding value capture through drug delivery innovation, and benchmarked against specific metrics to show how the center should drive top-line value and efficiency.
- Assessing a novel platform to drive growth/provide protection from biosimilars: A key large-molecule product launched by a major biotech company was facing both a leveling off of growth and potential biosimilar competition. L.E.K. worked with the client and external device technology providers to identify and characterize potential use cases for a differentiated drug delivery LCM opportunity. Following a triage, we developed a business case supported by robust user research, forecasts and financial analytics. The product has launched and is considered a benchmark for successful device commercialization.