Event Information

Time：October 28, 2014 (Friday)

Place：TRPMA Conference Room
（1F, No. 465-1, Sec. 6, Zhongxiao E. Rd., Nangang Dist., Taipei City 11557, Taiwan）

The TRPMA invited ASLAN Pharmaceuticals to hold a series of seminars on Innovative Drug R&D Strategies. Dr Carl Firth, the CEO of ASLAN Pharmaceuticals, gave a speech on “How to build a portfolio of innovative drugs by inlicensing from global pharma and biotech”. ASLAN Pharmaceuticals is a Singapore-based innovative drug developer. Its business operation model is to inlicense pre-clinical new drugs for cancers and inflammatory diseases developed by international pharmaceutical manufacturers and to use the high quality and efficient resources in Asia to perform follow-up clinical trials. At present, ASLAN has four drugs in the clinical development process, including a Phase IIb investigational new drug for stomach cancer.

Dr Firth pointed out that many big pharmaceutical companies seek external partners to jointly develop new drugs in order to improve the research efficiency and to share the risk. Therefore, small and medium biotech companies which are interested in partnering with big companies, have to establish their core strategy and competitive edge. They must specialize in certain diseases or R&D stages so as to increase the chance of securing a licensing contract. Dr Firth introduced the sources of drug licensing, including global pharmaceutical companies, regional pharmaceutical companies, biotech companies and research institutes. He also analysed their pros and cons. Dr Firth briefed the audience on various types of licensing contract and shared ASLAN’s practical experiences with the audience. The audience were impressed and considered the contents very useful.

In the future, the TRPMA will continue collaborating with ASLAN in organizing speeches and courses of innovative drug R&D strategy to help the biopharmaceutical companies in Taiwan obtain the first-hand knowledge and improve their R&D capacity.

The TRPMA invited Dr Carl Firth, CEO of ASLAN Pharmaceuticals, to deliver a speech on “How to build a portfolio of innovative drugs by inlicensing from global pharma and biotech”.