Commercialization

Commercialization, the process of bringing a new product or service to market, is an important aspect of translational research.  A basic understanding and appreciation of the commercialization process is important to avoid mistakes that could slow the arrival of new products to the medical community.
 

General product classes

• therapeutics
• devices
• research tools
• diagnostics

Each have their own unique set of issues and timeline to market but all of them share some commonalities, and few of them will make it to patients, doctors and investigators unless final stage development is overseen by a company.
 

Why companies?

• because they have the necessary experience and funding to bring new products to market
   

But it's risky

• only about 1 in 9 potential drugs will make it successfully all the way through the clinical trial process (Kola, I. & Landis, J. Can the pharmaceutical industry reduce attrition rates? Nature Rev. Drug Discov. 3, 711–715. 2004)
• success rates are typically higher for other product classes
• no amount of testing in computer simulations, laboratory dishes or in animals can realistically model the reaction of the human body to a new drug or device.

Needless to say, failures can be expensive propositions and companies are constantly balancing risk/reward ratios for new potential products.
 

There are multiple pathways of activity to consider in the commercialization of translational research.  Click on the picture to see a larger version ( 110k). Special thanks to the Wallace H. Coulter Foundation for lending us this slide.

Areas that can dramatically affect that risk/reward ratio include:

• intellectual property
• market size
• regulation
• reimbursement concerns.

Click on the slide to see a schematic representation of the many different processes involved in the commercialization process.
 

Want to learn more?

Click on the links to additional pages in this section to learn more about different components of the commercialization process from a high level perspective, and feel free to contact the Research Discovery Program (email) at NUCATS with questions – we’ll do our best to find answers.