This post is part of a series of articles I plan to write for past projects to help existing and potential clients understand the journey of a project beyond the traditional slide case study you would get in a proposal.
Whenever I write a project history, I deliberately keep parts vague to ensure the client and interests are blinded. I will use italicized nouns to help blind the project, aka Organ instead of Heart or Delivery Route instead of Subcutaneous.
Over my career, I have been fortunate to work on many research consulting projects with leaders across different Pharma and Medical technology functions, some of whom may never have commissioned a life science consulting project using Competitive Intelligence, Market Research, or Asset Landscaping.
I always enjoy the teaching aspect of the process as much as the delivery of value against their end goals, which this article aims to do.
Client Need
A client team was developing a Novel Modality for delivery to an Organ.
They knew the Delivery Technology they wanted to use and needed to understand it better, including whether any companies would be open to licensing or collaboration. They also had internal experimental findings they wanted to sense-check based on others’ experiences.
To deliver this project, we decided to identify which companies and academics were working in the area, assess their progress, and determine who had the best Technology or knowledge and who may be open to partnering.
We established that the initial part of the project could be done well with secondary research, but due to the immature space, it was also important to conduct primary research and speak with experts.
This is where having an external consultant provides a lot of value. Due to the sensitivity of their research, they needed a consultant who would not be identified by potential partners, collaborators, or future competitors during calls and who could provide an external viewpoint and unbiased perspective.
Phase 1 – Secondary Research
After introductory calls, we finalized the approach and began with the first secondary research stage.
The client knew limited work had been conducted on delivering the Novel Modality to their Organ of interest, even in small animals. This was the earliest stage in the drug lifecycle I had worked on, which meant the published research would include basic science and animal studies.
The initial broad sweep of published scientific literature uncovered many articles covering the delivery of this Delivery Technology. However, many were for delivery **to other parts of the body and for the Organ of interest, it was limited to about 30 papers spread over the last 15 years.
To supplement this, we also searched for companies working on delivering this Novel Modality to the Organ. Again, it was easy to find companies working on the Delivery Technology, and on the Novel Modality delivered with other technologies to the target site, but the overlap of both was limited.
To make this more challenging, these companies were also in early preclinical development, with limited information on their websites, investor releases, or presentations.
But, with the companies captured, we could dig deeper by scanning Linkedin.
This is generally useful for early-stage research to understand a start-up’s disease or drug delivery technology focus. Even if the company has no public materials, you can look at the scientists’ academic backgrounds to build educated hypotheses about what they are working on.
We identified that one of the companies with no information on the Organ on its website had hired 4 postdocs and scientists with 30-40 years combined experience on that Organ, giving a good signal they were working on it and increasing the level of interest for this company.
Phase 1: Interim Report
As with many of these research projects, we planned an interim update at the end of the secondary research phase.
Building a solid story and recommendations out of the existing findings was challenging.
Sometimes, secondary research provides 80% of what is needed for a good answer to the research question and recommendations, and the primary enables testing of any open questions and additional nuance.
Other times, it gets you 20% there, with more questions than answers, giving enough to educate the team on the fundamentals, but requiring primary research to provide a proper understanding of the topic.
The client found the interim findings helpful; we had found companies they had not heard of, papers they hadn’t read and weren’t aware of the expertise of staff in the Organ at several companies that were on their radar.
We also used this presentation to discuss the topics for primary interviews and the profiles of experts we would interview in Phase 2.
Phase 2: Primary Research
As is always the case at this stage, a discussion guide was essential. It was an expansive document covering multiple specialist topics, and we expected few experts would be able to answer all of the questions.
To build a good depth of response by topic, we targeted recruiting 10 experts. The highest-ranked were ex-employees of companies or academic groups identified in Phase 1 who had published research. We also looked for those with either experience in Technology or any type of delivery of the Novel Modality to the Organ.
Across the double-blinded interviews, we explored topics such as the Technology, delivery routes to best target specific locations in the Organ, how to conduct the preclinical trials, how to prepare the formulation, and to understand if anyone else had observed similar findings in preclinical tests as the team had in their experiments.
These calls were helpful as they corroborated where all the companies and academics were in the development process. We also triangulated who was doing the most innovative work, why they would make a great partner for the client, which animals and cells were good models for testing, why you might observe specific drug characteristics during formulation, and how to ensure a safe end product.
We stayed closely in touch with the client team, who often joined the calls as silent observers, asking additional questions and giving feedback via instant message, increasing the discussions’ value.
As is often the case with this number of interviews, we iterated the discussion guide after a mid-series check-in, adding follow-up questions to topics raised in preliminary interviews and testing them with future experts.
Final Report and Recommendations
The final findings were delivered to a wider client team, covering the entirety of the research, recommendations, and next steps.
The primary recommendation was to partner with one of the identified academics (whose company was open to partnering) based on interviews with experts familiar with them.
Other companies and academic groups provided fertile ground for recruiting expertise and tracking knowledge.
We also allayed fears that anything was “wrong” with samples in a few of their experiments and that they could continue with their development program.
The project ran successfully, with excellent collaboration throughout. The client was very happy with the overall findings and support, which enabled them to progress their program and gave them multiple options to discuss internally with their leadership.
Article wrap up
If you would like to discuss in more detail what to expect on a life science consulting project drop me a message and we can set up a call.
If there are any particular types of projects that would be interesting to learn more about let me know, as I plan to write more of these.