Among drugmakers, big pharma has a reputation of being stodgy and old-fashioned, while biotech startups are seen as rife with fresher thinking — companies where innovative solutions are actually hatched and are then acquired by those older, bigger firms.
But at the STAT Summit on Wednesday, Daniel Skovronsky, the chief scientific and medical officer at Eli Lilly, discussed how Lilly has been able to crack both obesity and Alzheimer’s, two areas that have long stumped drug developers, and now two of the hottest commercial opportunities.
“It’s duration of interest, perseverance in a field for decades, which small companies just can’t do,” Skovronsky said. “But big companies can do it, and we can do it in areas that no one else wants to work in.”