Promising faster returns could be dangerous, bio-IT expert warns

Drug development companies are dipping into dangerous waters by trying to persuade investors that the industry can achieve the same improvements in product cycle times delivered by other manufacturing industries, warns US-based bio-IT specialist Dan Stevens.

The trend, which Stevens claims is being fostered by a number of pharmaceutical company managers and bio-IT vendors, will place life science researchers in an impossible situation, he says.

Drug discovery is a different process than developing other types of consumer products and attempting to treat it in the same way will be counter-productive, he claims.

Stevens is responsible for high performance computing, storage and visualisation solutions for the life and chemical sciences at supercomputer vendor SGI. He has degrees in clinical medicine and science and was a product manager in an earlier role with Procter and Gamble.

His comments were made during a visit to Australia this month where he addressed the Bioactive Discovery in the New Millennium conference on molecular modelling in Victoria.

"My concern is that the product development cycle (of industries such as the auto and aviation industries) is not relevant to drug discovery."

Yet solution providers and some pharmaceutical company managers are promoting expectations that drug product cycles can be shrunk using the computing tools and concepts that have been successful in the auto and aviation industries.

Stevens says that the tools and philosophies which work in those industries don't transfer to drug discovery with its heavy component of scientific research.

"Science research isn't like developing basic consumer products where you can trim the time it takes to get a new model to consumers. In science, the process is about testing and refining data differently and developing experiments to prove or disprove theories -- it is not about cycle times."

Managers are ignoring that fact and "pushing solutions and objectives on researchers which don't fit their needs," Stevens says.

"Rather than being given tools to help the discovery process, they are being hindered in that process."

A belief in the ability of computer-aided tools to bring products to market more efficiently and reliably has its roots in the role of bio-IT in generating and analysing the large volumes of data that accompanied the genomics revolution in the 1990s.

But the hype surrounding that revolution created unrealistic expectations in an investment community which doesn't find $500 million, 10-year-long product cycles attractive.

They would like to believe that those cycles can be shortened using the same techniques that have worked well in, say, the auto industry, Stevens says.

"The problem is that pushes objectives and processes on scientists which don't meet the needs of the scientific process. Rather than being given tools which help that process, they are being hindered in their discovery processes.

Stevens claims SGI's philosophy is to provide tools in the areas of high performance computing, storage and visualisation which have the flexibility that allow them to do their work but also conform to the industry's price performance requirements.

"We need to demonstrate both how our systems help them work faster and meet their research needs but also meet their business needs."

To address that, SGI has developed products like its shared file system, CXFS, for the Storage Area Networks (SANs) used by many life science research establishments. SANs link vastly different types and brands of computer systems to storage disks at high speeds and allow researchers using different systems to share data at high rates.

"CFXS removes data-sharing bottlenecks in SANs [and] lets scientists be more flexible with their computer and data in terms of testing algorithms and software or new ways of interacting with their data without large hindrances."