REFLECTIONS ON PHARMACEUTICAL COMPANY PROJECT PORTFOLIO MANAGEMENT

Ethical pharmaceutical companies must manage their project portfolios actively to maximize return on research and development (R&D) investment. Research (discov-ery) must be organized and managed to meet, if not exceed, the target number of new active substances as development candidates each year. These numbers are gov-erned by corporate businessplans, the sums invested in R&D. and the very high fail-ure rate in development. A mix of high cost-risk/return and lesser cost-riskheturn new active substance projects is recommended. These need to be balanced with proj-ects for the development of new indications and/or new formulations of patented medicines, projects for new formulations of standard unpatented medicines, and li-censed-in materials falling into all these categories. Key Words: Pharmaceutical; New medicines; Research and developmen