Pharmaceutical Public-Private Partnerships in the United States and Europe: Moving from the Bench to the Bedside

Abstract

Abstract:Both to address unmet medical needs and to improve industry competitiveness, regulators in both the United States and the European Union have taken bold steps to translate academic research from the university lab to the patient. A pharmaceutical public-private partnership (PPPP), which is a legally binding contract between a private pharmaceutical enterprise and a public research university (or a private university doing research funded with public funds), can be a significant tool to ensure a more efficient payoff in the highly regulated world of pharmaceuticals. In particular, a properly framed binding contract, coupled with respect for positive social norms, can move the parties away from an inefficient prisoners' dilemma Nash Equilibrium to the Pareto Optimal Frontier. When coupled with appropriate attention to the difficult task of coordinating the actions of interdependent actors, a PPPP arrangement can enhance the likelihood of successful commercialization by flipping the parties' incentives as compared with more traditional contracts. Because PPPPs are less common in Europe than in the United States, a key purpose of this article is to provide an annotated roadmap that universities, private firms, and EU policy makers can use to create efficient PPPPs to enhance for-profit innovation in the pharmaceutical industry in Europe. A secondary purpose is to suggest amendments to the U.S. laws governing the patenting of government-funded technology to prevent undue burdens on the sharing of certain upstream medical discoveries and research tools. Our analysis is not only comparative; it also combines, we believe for the first time, a game theory and law and management approach to for-profit PPPPs.

Reflections on the Future of Pharmaceutical Public-Private Partnerships: From Input to Impact

“…It has been around for a while, with the aim of sustaining pharmaceutical innovation and advancing new product development ( 32 , 33 ). The US is a prime example, where the Bayh-Dole Act of 1980 is considered an important spur for numerous collaborations between academic research groups and small biotech companies or large pharmaceutical companies ( 34 , 35 ). This development is part of a shift that universities have made, especially in the US and the EU, through which they consider technology transfer and commercialization as an integral part of their mission, a trend dubbed by D’Este and Perkman as the “Entrepreneurial University” ( 36 ).…”

“…As highlighted by Perkmann et al ., the intangibility of many outcome indicators will require the identification of suitable and measurable proxies ( 62 ). This is especially true when it comes to multi-stakeholder public-private collaborations, for which various soft elements of critical success factors have been identified, such as trust ( 118 ), value recognition ( 119 , 120 ), communication ( 34 , 119 , 121 ), and stakeholder involvement ( 119 – 122 ).…”

Global research on artemisinin and its derivatives: Perspectives from patents

“…Co-patenting activities between firms and universities could exhibit a positive association with market value [45], whereas co-patenting among firms has generally been considered disadvantageous to commercial performance and a secondbest strategy that firms have preferred to avoid [46,47]. Governments in the United States and the European Union are also trying to encourage partnerships between universities, research centers, and companies to promote the movement of medical research from 'bench to bedside' [48].…”

To bind or not to bind

“…The Nash Equilibrium occurs when the players (parties) at the same time make their best reply to the strategy choices of the other player (party). Thus, the Nash Equilibrium is showing that there are a pair of payoffs reflecting the strategy chosen by two rational players (parties) (Bagley & Tvarnø, 2014). 35.…”