RE:RE:RE:RE:RE:About the Pancreatic Cancer Action Network (PanCAN) Earlier this month, Riovant revealed positive data for an inflammatory bowel disease drug it’s developing with Pfizer, positioning it as a competitor to a closely watched medicine from rival Prometheus Biosciences.
The parent company of many biotechnology subsidiaries, Roivant is part of a growing wave of life sciences companies to emerge in recent years with a “hub-and-spoke” model.
“Ultimately, the way value is created in our business is by generating important scientific data,” Matt Gline, Roivant’s CEO, told BioPharma Dive in an interview.
“We are cognizant of our large appetite for late-stage R&D, which is expensive, and always trying to balance that with the fact that we’re well-capitalized and we can use that as a competitive advantage in a tough market,” Gline said.
Gline continued “Big pharma companies, although they are clearly focused and constrained on being efficient with R&D spend, are in many cases swimming in cash right now. Capital is not a concern for big pharma companies.
[Back] in 2021, there were many — not Roivant — discovery-stage platform technology companies that were just en vogue. That was a thing that was easy to raise capital for and the markets were excited about it.
That trend has shifted significantly. Investors are looking for safe harbors in the storm. Early-stage scientific platforms are not safe harbors. You set out on a course that will take two to seven years to prove, or more. The problem with that is if the prevailing winds shift at year two and a half. If what you were doing was trendy, you could raise lots of money around it and attract lots of talent in year one, but there’s no guarantee that you’ll be able to keep doing those things in year four.”
“ Biotech companies have clearly done a pretty good job of developing drugs over the past couple of decades, but big pharma has struggled a little bit. We think some of that has to do with incentive alignment, nimbleness and entrepreneurial spirit.
The things that people don’t like to think about, but are huge differences between big pharma companies and biotech companies that go straight to the bottom line once you’re commercial.
The hub-and-spoke model, the ‘Vant’ model, is a tool to make that happen.” said Gline .