Study Examines the Power of Biopharma and Patient Advocacy Partnerships in Drug Development

Increasingly, biopharma companies are forming relationships with patient advocacy groups. BayBio released an executive summary “Successful Public Private Partnerships” which was based on a survey of biotech and foundation CEOS, VPs of research, and directors of patient advocacy to highlight the benefits of partnership, identify opportunities for growth, share best practices and describe key pitfalls to avoid.

The premise of the study is that patient groups foundations offer biopharma urgency, intelligence and resources including patient data and biospecimens, preclinical models, and trial and recruitment support in drug development. If partnerships flourish, it can lead to medicines, devices and diagnostics getting to market faster and less expensively, and in turn helping patients and rewarding investors.

In this study, of the 63 biomedical companies, 62 percent focused on therapeutics with the rest developing medical devices, diagnostics, services and biotools. Of those, 38 percent were startups, 26 percent mezzanine, and 36 percent mature, with market caps ranging from $550 million to $140 billion. Seventy-four percent of company respondents had existing partnerships with foundations or wanted to develop them.

The 34 participating patient foundations represented missions focused on finding cures, funding research and advocating for patients across a range of diseases including cancers, diabetes and neurological disorders. While 20 percent of the foundation respondents had budgets exceeding $10 million, nearly half of them had budgets of $500,000 or less and the remaining third spent up to $10 million. All of the foundation respondents had existing partnerships with companies or wanted to develop them.

Through this work, BayBio intends to provide a roadmap–both for life science companies and patient groups–of how to explore, form and navigate successful outcomes.

You can read the full report here.