Cultivating An R&D Ecosystem: Thriving Through Collaboration

By Jennifer Ringler, Contributing Writer

In January, Pfizer announced the creation of the Innovative Target Exploration Network (ITEN), what the company calls “a new, early-stage partnering model that enables collaborative relationships with select academic institutions and principal investigators around the world, to identify research projects that have the potential to deliver novel therapeutic targets and mechanisms of action to underpin future drug discovery in core areas of interest to Pfizer.” In effect, this is a model that flourishes on collaboration with academia and private investigators in the earliest stages of R&D — often even before preclinical work.