Thursday, December 11th

To download the full Life Sciences agenda, click here.

Life Sciences Agenda
Global Challenges – National Systems
December 11, 2008

A New Generation of Global Innovation Partnerships:
Policies, Investments, and Pilots to Leapfrog
Western Models in Research and Delivery

MISSION: The objectives of this Life Sciences track are to (1) establish a vision for partnerships between universities and life science companies in the United States, China, and India that aim to transform traditional models of drug development, device development, and health care delivery; (2) identify agendas in order to trigger the investments, mechanisms, and public policies needed to achieve these partnerships; and (3) recommend new, innovative, cross-border partnership pilot projects.

7:30 am               Registration

8:15 – 8:30 am    WELCOME – Jeffrey Elton, Senior Vice President of Strategy and Global Chief Operating Officer, Novartis Institutes for BioMedical Research

8:30 – 9:30 am   INTRODUCTORY KEYNOTE – Tarun Khanna, Jorge Paulo Lemann Professor, Harvard Business School

9:30 – 10:00 am   KEYNOTE ADDRESS – Global Talent and Innovation Partnerships: The 2015 Vision
A discussion of the challenges facing the region and a call to action for new partnerships between the United States, India, and China to expand access to global talent and innovative collaborations.

Edward Benz, President, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute

10:00 – 10:30 am  Break

10:30 – 12:00 pm  PANEL – Global Talent and Innovation Partnerships in the U.S. & Asia: First Steps
This opening plenary panel will frame the issues surrounding global talent and innovation partnerships. The panel will discuss common standards, research protocols, funding commitments, and mechanisms required to develop such partnerships.  Panelists will also discuss lessons learned from China and India, as well as how links between national systems provide a space for these partnerships to be created and developed.

                                
                    
12:00 – 1:30 pm  LUNCHEON ADDRESS – Innovations in Health Care Collaboration: A U.S.-India Model

Barry R. Bloom, Dean, Harvard School of Public Health

1:30 – 3:00 pm  STRATEGY SESSIONS – PART 1: ISSUES AND CHALLENGES

After the plenary, the Life Sciences conference will break into five (5) strategy sessions that will provide a smaller venue to explore model partnerships connecting universities and life science companies and recommend policies and investments between the United States, China, and India. The goal of the strategy sessions is to have to more focused, participative discussions around topics that are critical to the industry with respect to Asia, such as the future of human clinical trials, an examination of national research funding strategies, ways to overcome barriers to partnerships, the impact of information technology on healthcare delivery, and innovation. Each strategy session will be conducted in two parts. In the First Session (1:30-3:00pm), strategy groups will focus on identifying major cross-border challenges. In the Second Session (3:30-5:00pm), strategy groups will focus on solutions to those challenges, such as possible responses by academic institutions, industry, and government.

Human Clinical Trials:  Opportunities to align clinical trials in the U.S., China, and India
This strategy session will present participants with a pilot proposal that will showcase a trial project between the US, China, and India. The goal of the session is to identify the barriers to partnership and to make recommendations, such as public-private partnerships, to overcome these barriers. In the First Session, the Panel Chair will lead a discussion that will provide an overview of the landscape for human clinical trials in China and India by laying out the issues, the setting, the challenges, and the opportunities. In the Second Session, panelists and participants will draft a roadmap for a pilot project. The Pilot in Session 2 would be designed to attempt first-in-human trials in China, starting with a Chinese pharmaceutical agent that targets a major unmet medical need within the country. This program could help pave the way for future domestic drug development by providing experience with the regulatory process in new drug development and by creating the clinical trial infrastructure needed to test novel compounds. If successful, the pilot might open up opportunities for future early clinical trial work that would utilize compounds whose development involved contributions from companies both in and outside of China.

Research Funding:  National funding strategies to support innovation partnerships
This panel will discuss proposals and make recommendations on how to structure the next generation of national and regional investments in order to transform the development of new drugs and medical devices, as well as to support more effective, cross-border partnerships between universities and industry. The First Session will address the similarities and differences of the funding ecosystems in the U.S., China, and India, including specific context after the U.S. Presidential election. The group will discuss how drug development is funded, whether it is from government (federal vs. local), the private sector, philanthropic organizations, or patient advocacy groups. As part of these country-specific discussions, variations in funding models will be put on the table, such as state-based funding and targeted research funding made by patient advocacy groups, as well as recent trends in drug development, such as the advent of more genetic-based medicines. In the Second Session, the Panel Chair will lead a discussion that is more policy-oriented and will culminate with the drafting of funding recommendations to support academic- industry partnerships and help overcome the barriers discussed in the First Session.

Model Partnerships and Barriers to Overcome: Practical solutions to regulatory, structural, and cultural obstacles to expanding innovation partnerships
Participants in this strategy session will identify roadblocks encountered during the development of partnerships and offer prioritized solutions, including issues surrounding the protection of intellectual property, ownership and control, and rules on importation and exportation. Specifically, panelists will discuss examples of partnerships at Novartis, Eli Lilly, and Wyeth’s partnership endeavors in Aberdeen, Scotland.  The First Session will focus on R&D Partnerships and the Second Session will focus on Talent and Education Partnerships including MIT’s emerging “train the trainers” partnership in India and Dr. Kenneth Chien’s MGH program with the University of Hong Kong. In both sessions, the group will draft a set of recommendations for overcoming partnership barriers as well as policies to support them. Questions discussed will include: (1) How does an institution set up partnerships that are collaborative in nature without “owning” the project or initiative? and (2), what are the opportunities to integrate business and academic partners in India and China?

The final two breakouts will examine innovations in health care delivery and how the advent of new technologies and R&D can positively influence the ability of nations to provide better health care and data management to their citizens.
   
Information Technology: e-Health and data management
This session will examine the next generation of e-Health initiatives, including comparisons of Web 2.0 initiatives, proprietary systems, and hospital-specific models, as well opportunities for China and India to leapfrog the US with these initiatives as the new solutions are exported back to the West. In the First Session, the Panel Chair will lead a discussion on the future of information technology in life sciences in the U.S., China, and India using the challenge of connecting patient data and health records to support human clinical trials within cross-border collaborations among partners from the three countries. Discussion will cover an examination of how the IT industry in the life sciences could evolve in the three countries, and the legislation required to protect both providers and patients against data loss, security breaches, and identify theft. As hospitals and practices move toward more distributive models of patient data, how will standards and regulations create an environment of trust in the absence of centralized certification and/or monolithic regulations? The Second Session will seek to produce a roadmap for a pilot project that links universities and industries in a cross-border collaboration. The group will devise a framework for such a collaboration and identify one initial project for academic partners that could be carried out by students in the three countries.

Innovation Partnerships for Health Care Delivery in India and China
This session will investigate alternative business models to address healthcare delivery challenges in India and China. The session will ask which models of collaboration can be devised between healthcare product and delivery players and academia to improve the quality and numbers of healthcare professionals in India and China. Participants will be presented with a few key models in order to focus the discussion around the identification of policies and recommendations needed to expand similar cross-border partnerships and to apply these models to meet the health care needs in growing markets. In the First Session, the Panel Chair will lead a discussion on the conceptual structure of the challenges and opportunities in healthcare delivery in both India and China, with a focus on the application of medical devices, technologies, examples of current partnerships (Public Health Foundation of India; MBL-Serum Institute; Nanobiosym). The Second Session will focus on talent and education partnerships in healthcare delivery. The goal of Session 2 is to present emerging models for delivery and talent partnerships, to identify the barriers to these partnerships, and to draft recommendations for how to overcome them.

3:00 – 3:30 pm   Break

3:30 – 5:00 pm  STRATEGY SESSIONS – PART 2: RESPONSES AND SOLUTIONS

6:00 – 9:00 pm  INNOVATION LEADERSHIP DINNER