In the highly competitive world of biopharma business development, companies face increasing pressure to identify the next blockbuster drug while navigating limited resources and time constraints. Many pharmaceutical and biotech companies today are trying to identify prospective programs they could potentially in-license into their organization to help bolster their pipeline. And so these teams, especially business development and scientific teams, are under a lot of pressure to identify the next big program for their indication and strategy.

Challenges in business development

 In this overall process, a set of challenges emerges for those dedicated to finding the ideal asset.

• Limited resources and time constraints. In terms of both business development talent and internal scientific resources, those activities require a lot of time and effort to sift through the large number of potential programs that are out there to identify the right diamond in the rough for their business.
• Proliferation of new mechanisms, modalities, and technologies as it’s applied to therapeutics. The varied science that’s being brought to the forefront poses another challenge for many business development teams.
• Intense competition and the need for quick decision-making are also emerging. Biopharma companies need to combat the loss of exclusivity and compete with a new crop of mid-size and emerging biopharma companies that are looking to fill pipeline gaps with external assets.
• Complexity of evaluating diverse scientific data coming from a huge variety of sources, written in different languages and different formats.

In other words, there are a lot of dollars chasing a modest to small number of high-potential assets. Companies need to move quickly to identify the programs that have the best chance at working — and then secure those deals before a competitor comes in with a larger check. In this landscape, business development teams must act faster and change how they operate to find the next program. 

The due diligence process

Due diligence is essentially a T-shaped process. It begins with understanding a landscape of the overall domain, both of a particular indication (especially if it’s new to a company) and in terms of looking at the prospective programs currently being developed or those that have already been developed specifically targeting that space. Identifying the particular opportunities and assets within that landscape that might be relevant is a multifaceted, multilevel process. This highlights how due diligence is performed but also reveals a variety of different challenges that emerge for teams of every size.

Landscape

Many teams have to context switch from indication to indication or program to program as they evaluate different opportunities. 

Diligence

Teams must assess key development risks and benchmark against Standard of Care (SoC) and other programs in the space. They also must consider the economic potential based on the science and forecast the overall landscape’s evolution based on the program’s timeline ultimately reaching patients. 

Deep Dive

Teams need to examine multiple different facets of the science, from clinical development to biology to manufacturing (amongst other facets). They also need the resources to evaluate and then underwrite the prospective risks around a given program. This level requires organizations and teams to look at very specific development risks, identify prospective solutions, and, more importantly, drive alignment across the organization to identify whether these specific risks, approaches, and plans are what they want to take on for their overall organization.

Overcoming due diligence challenges with AI

As early-stage investors, Vibe Bio has seen this challenge firsthand, so we built out VibeOne as a specialized AI analyst to expedite this work. VibeOne:

• Ingests drug program data (scientific, CMC, regulatory, FDA, etc…) from various sources, including the open Internet, PowerPoints, journal articles, press releases, data rooms, and more. 
• Automatically collects, translates, structures, and sifts through that data to be analyzed. 
• Analyzes the data provided around a given program or indication and evaluates it through the same lens as a drug development expert would from a diligence standpoint
• Delivers a set of prospective scorecards, summaries, and different types of analyses that help support search and evaluation activities. This means that your business development team now has all the data needed to decide what to do next. 
• Is customizable and continuously improved. This flexibility and capacity for continuous learning and improvement make VibeOne even better at identifying and evaluating assets over time.

An AI-powered pipeline analysis solution can speed up the evaluation process, improve the accuracy of risk assessments, and enable biopharma business development teams to identify promising assets faster.

AI in biopharma business development

AI is quickly changing the biopharma BD landscape, emerging as an important tool that enables companies to stay competitive in an increasingly competitive and data-driven industry. Those who embrace AI-powered solutions for due diligence and decision-making will gain a serious edge by increasing their ability to quickly identify promising assets and form strategic partnerships. Ultimately, this has the potential to accelerate the delivery of life-changing therapies to patients.

Watch our on-demand webinar Biopharma BD meets AI for specific examples illustrating how AI transforms biopharma business development.