For Ironwood Pharmaceuticals — Sustainable Innovation Requires Owning It
By Rob Wright, Chief Editor, Life Science Leader
Follow Me On Twitter @RfwrightLSL
From The March 2016 Issue
The Building Of Ironwood Pharmaceuticals
One of the long-term goals for Ironwood Pharmaceuticals, the subject of Life Science Leader magazine’s March 2016 cover feature, has been to create a commercial engine to connect directly with the patients it aims to serve and capture the most value from the drugs it develops. However, in 2012 when signs seemed to indicate the company would soon be receiving its first FDA drug approval (i.e., LINZESS (linaclotide) for irritable bowel syndrome with constipation (IBS-C) and chronic idiopathic constipation (CIC) in adults), the commercialization task became how best to do so. “People asked me if we should license it out,” says Ironwood CEO and cofounder Peter Hecht. “But if you expect that you’re going to be in it for the long haul, and you’ve got a drug you believe in, you need sales and marketing people that are as focused and passionate about the product as those scientists that first developed it.” But adding a field sales force is expensive. For example, the annual cost of readying one primary care sales representative to hit the field can range from $125,000 to $200,000. So although the company didn’t want to build a 1,000-2,000 person primary care sales force to educate the more than 150,000 U.S. physicians that would prescribe the drug, it also didn’t want to go the “rent-a-rep” route. As a result, Ironwood found a way to get the best of both worlds. “We partnered with Forest Labs in a 50-50 deal for the US, so that we could collaborate to launch and commercialize the drug together,” he says. “We put about 160 reps out in the field, targeting both gastroenterologists and high-potential primary care doctors, and they [Forest] put more than a thousand.”
According to Hecht, one of the benefits of creating long-term partnerships with companies like Forest, which has since become Allergan, is it allows you to remain nimble. “We can focus on what we can become great at and leverage the reach of our key partners,” he states. “But having our own sales force has proven incredibly effective – our combined effort has resulted in one of the most successful primary care launches in recent years – and it allows us to ply physician feedback back into our in-house innovation engine.” Hecht believes that when it comes to creating a long-term biopharma, having your own commercial engine has to be part of the equation. “You can’t get comfortable that another company is going to care as much or as passionately as you do and is going to sustain that for the 20-plus years of your drug’s commercial life,” he states. “Commercializing our drugs is core to our ability to ensure that we maximize that benefit for our patients, our shareholders and our organization, so we can maximize the value toward realizing our goal of creating a sustainable engine of innovation.”