Did Pfizer Cut Back Some of Its Best Compounds?

John LaMattina has a look at Pfizer's oncology portfolio, and what their relentless budget-cutting has been doing to it. The company is taking some criticism for having outlicensed two compounds (tremelimumab to AstraZeneca and neratinib to Puma) which seem to be performing very well after Pfizer ditched them. Here's LaMattina (a former Pfizer R&D head, for those who don't know): Unfortunately, over 15 years of mergers and severe budget cuts, Pfizer has not been able to prosecute all of the compounds in its portfolio. Instead, it has had to make choices on which experimental medicines to keep and which to set aside. However, as I have stated before, these choices are filled with uncertainties as oftentimes the data in hand are far from complete. But in oncology, Pfizer seems to be especially snake-bit in the decisions it has made. That goes for their internal compounds, too. As LaMattina goes one to say, palbociclib is supposed to be one of their better compounds, but it was shelved for several years due to more budget-cutting and the belief that the effort would be better spent elsewhere. It would be easy for an outside observer to whack away at the company and wonder how incompetent they could be to walk away from all these winners, but that really isn't fair. It's very hard in oncology to tell what's going to work out and what isn't - impossible, in fact, after compounds have progressed to a certain stage. The only way to be sure is to take these things on into the clini...
Source: In the Pipeline - Category: Chemists Tags: Cancer Source Type: blogs