Drug Meeting Ground

A Solution for the Industry

Concrete Benefits

The creation of CQDM strengthens Québec’s competitiveness in drug R&D in a sustainable manner. Due to its pluralist and multidisciplinary nature, the organization has a positive effect on the creation of research frameworks in Québec. By helping better orient research efforts toward market expectations, CQDM is able to fully assume its role as a disseminator of knowledge and a creator of economic value.

CQDM is a functional network that brings together the vast pharmaceutical industry, the academic milieu and biotechnology companies. It thereby promotes the creation of innovative partnerships. It also offers a forum where the regulatory issues of commercialization, research and development can be discussed by researchers, decision makers and industrial entrepreneurs.

CQDM is instrumental to optimizing the use of existing and competitive research infrastructures around the globe. It also promotes access to an extensive body of knowledge and skills in Québec by encouraging academics to get involved in selected specialized areas of precompetitive research.

CQDM works to meet the skill training needs of highly qualified workers in the drug development sector, particularly in areas where there is a real or foreseeable shortage in the short term. The partnerships between companies and the academic milieu promote concrete research in the industrial milieu.

CQDM's activities also generate positive impact for small biotechnology companies. Its distinctive collective approach facilitates access to internationally renowned experts, cutting-edge technical support centres, and common resources and equipment.

By reducing the waiting times and risks associated with the development of new therapies, CQDM works to consolidate emerging projects and the technical credibility that young companies need to reassure investors.

The Need to Better Channel Public Investment

New drugs are discovered and developed according to a process that is complex, lengthy and expensive. According to analyses done in the United States, the development cost of a drug ranges from US$500 million to US$1.1 billion, with the average cost exceeding US$800 million. Despite the substantial increase in these amounts, there was a drop in the number of new products commercialized in the last decade. Furthermore, in the last few years, several drugs that were already commercialized were taken off the market for safety reasons.

Since the beginning of the decade, Canadian federal agencies have been investing more and more in R&D. A 2006 study conducted by Secor entitled Pharmaceutical research and its value to Canadians stated that “Contributions from provincial governments and bodies such as Genome Canada and Génome Québec, the Canadian Foundation for Innovation (CFI), the Canada Research Chairs and the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada bring the total to over $1 billion per year.”

Although public investment in R&D is on the rise, a series of reports and analyses, including one published in 2007 by the National Research Council Canada entitled Options for Addressing the Gap. Pharmaceutical R&D and Commercial Exploitation, concluded that the anticipated return on investment and commercial spin-offs are not commensurate with the investments being made. In a 2004 report entitled Institutional Activities on the Commercialisation of Research, the CFI reported that the royalties collected from the results of research conducted by American universities are twice as high as those for Canadian universities.

Efforts are now being made, namely by the National Research Council Canada (NRC) and the Networks of Centres of Excellence of Canada, to help put in place networks, institutes and new models to accelerate the creation and commercialization of innovative drug discoveries. Similarly, the recent Québec Research and Innovation Strategy, unveiled in 2006 under the title An Innovative, Prosperous Québec, sets out effective research measures to enable Québec to differentiate itself and increase spin-offs from public and private research in the province.

The investments made by public organizations at the federal or provincial level should be based on a stronger joint effort and encourage the deployment of strategies to build on our achievements, stimulate and support existing centres of excellence, expertise and scientific platforms that are already making an important contribution. In this way, Québec and Canada will stand apart and be better prepared to face international competition that is increasingly better structured. It was with this perspective in mind that CQDM was created.

The Need for a Functional Network

Biotechnology companies do not always seem to have a clear understanding of the needs and expectations of their partners and potential clients, that is, companies from the broader innovative pharmaceutical industry. More consistent communication and better coordination between these two sectors is needed.

Better communication between the industrial and academic sectors also appears to be key to better understand the industry’s needs and integrate them into research programs. This will also allow more promising discoveries to be transferred from the academic sector to the industrial sector when the time is right.

With annual sales of over $2 billion, the drug industry is undoubtedly a sector that is strategic to Québec’s future and prosperity. This sector is recognized as a driver of economic development and job creation, and it represents more than 600 companies, one quarter of which are public and parapublic research organizations. It is responsible for over 40,000 jobs in the province, including 25,000 highly qualified workers and 13,000 researchers in the biomedical sector.

Québec is home to five of the six research centres belonging to international pharmaceutical companies in Canada, specifically those of Merck, AstraZeneca, GlaxoSmithKline, Boehringer-Ingelheim and Wyeth. Several R&D centres devoted to clinical development, such as Novartis, Pfizer and Sanofi-Aventi, are also found in Québec.

Québec’s university network is internationally recognized for its energy and the quality of its researchers in the health field. The province has a critical mass of high-level researchers in several drug-related areas, including:

  • the identification and development of biomarkers
  • the identification and development of new therapeutic targets
  • drug chemistry
  • technological development for biopharmaceuticals
  • pharmacogenomics
  • epidemiology
  • evaluative research of drug therapies

Until recently, however, little effort was made to group these critical masses around initiatives that concentrate specifically on drug discovery.

In recent years, the Greater Montreal area has also been the stage for the development of new and internationally competitive research infrastructures. These infrastructures are supported by major investments from the provincial and federal governments. They have enabled the creation of technical support centres that greatly affect research and the discovery of new molecules with the potential to become the drugs of the future. Joint action and the coordination of these forces are another challenge that stakeholders are aware of and that will require new approaches. CQDM is the ideal forum for taking on this challenge.