C&EN TALKS WITH
JOHN LAMATTINA Veteran defender of BIG PHARMA sees opportunities for the traditional drug industry on a shifting playing field RICK MULLIN, C&EN NEW YORK CITY
the clinic rests largely in the hands of the John LaMattina, the former head of R&D pharmaceutical industry. We prove and at Pfizer. “In football now you have the disprove medical hypotheses.” West Coast Offense, the Pistol, and the There is no denying that big pharma’s Shotgun. But at the end of the day, it’s research capacity has plummeted since no different than when Vince Lombardi 2006, and that the closure of huge R&D was coaching. You gotta block, and you facilities is largely attributable to the loss gotta tackle.” of patent exclusivity on billion-dollarAn apt analogy coming from LaMatselling drugs and the industry’s inability tina, a longtime drug industry executive to invent replacements. At Pfizer, the who is one of the staunchest advocates failure of torcetrapib heralded major lab of big pharma’s traditional strengths in shutdowns, some of which were overJohn LaMattina poses the basics of discovering, developing, seen by LaMattina just prior to his exit. in lower Manhattan. and commercializing drugs. Still, the former Pfizer executive In the mid-2000s, when the sector challenges the notion that the pursuit of was truly beleaguered, LaMattina vehemently denounced the criblockbuster drugs has collapsed under its own weight. He points to tiques by Marcia Angell, former editor-in-chief of the New England potential multi-billion-dollar sellers on the horizon, such as NovarJournal of Medicine, and others who called the industry inefficient tis’s LCZ696, a treatment for heart failure. He notes also that Merck and uninnovative. He remained adamant following his departure & Co. and Eli Lilly & Co. are each advancing with cholesterol treatfrom Pfizer in the wake of the clinical failure of torcetrapib, the ments comparable to torcetrapib. company’s great hope for a follow-up to Lipitor. And he continued to place the big companies at the center of the action as the rest of IN LAMATTINA’S VIEW, the traditional pharmaceutical industry the world pronounced the end of the blockbuster drug era. has adapted to market shifts, downsizing without fundamentally Thus it is hardly surprising that LaMattina, despite his current changing. Fond of individual patient stories, he tells one of a womwork with PureTech Ventures, a venture capital firm focused on an treated successfully for cancer with Xalkori, a Pfizer drug adshepherding innovation from the smallest labs into the mainministered to lung cancer patients who have never smoked. That’s stream, continues to be tough on defense for big pharma. just 10% of all lung cancer patients, only half of whom are eligible On a recent visit to C&EN’s New York City bureau, LaMattina, to be treated with Xalkori. a member of the magazine’s advisory board, is re“This is not a major area,” he says, “but it is one in minded of statements he made in a June 2006 C&EN which your clinical trials are small, you don’t have to article. In it he recited a litany of big pharma success have major detailing of your drug because everyone “What really stories, accompanied by his signature indignation in the oncology field knows about it, and you can get has changed, over critics. He also predicted that the tide of public very favorable pricing.” and has been opinion will turn—that the industry’s central role will These days, LaMattina is busy as a senior partner eye-opening for at PureTech, be recognized as a new generation of therapeutic sucsupporting nascent innovators such as me, is the whole Gelesis, whose hydrogel capsule technology for treatcesses comes to market. move toward He smiles wanly. “I tried to be upbeat,” he says of ing obesity is his go-to success story. “PureTech is the interview. “If anything, it hasn’t gotten any better. rare diseases.” unique in looking very early,” he says, noting that the Maybe about the same. You still hear politicians camsupport it has given to companies such as Gelesis and paigning saying things like, ‘Elect me, and I will bring under conVedanta Biosciences, a developer of drugs that modulate the human trol tobacco, big oil, Wall Street, and big pharma.’ Automatically microbiome, would have been deemed too risky at a large drug comwe are now lumped into this group of people who are perceived as pany. The hope is to get such research beyond the speculative phase doing evil.” and into the clinic, with support from traditional players. Meanwhile, the small biotech and start-up drug companies credAnd the traditional players should see a lot of action as a result. ited with key scientific discoveries are gaining traction. But where “What really has changed, and has been eye-opening for me, is would these innovators be without the traditional drug industry, the whole move toward rare diseases, or diseases affecting small LaMattina asks. populations,” LaMattina says. Science, he adds, has yielded data on “I think the public still doesn’t get it,” he says. “Great basic targets that were unapproachable 10 years ago. And LaMattina is research comes out of the NIH or small start-up companies or acaclearly thrilled by the challenge ahead. demic institutions. But at the end of the day, actually coming up with “Yeah, expectations are high, but it’s nice to have high expectaa molecule or biologic that is safe in animals and then can be taken to tions,” he says. “I think all this is terrific, despite being a dinosaur.” ◾ RICK MULLIN/C&EN
“PERMIT ME a sports analogy,” says
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JANUARY 5, 2015
