The R&D Crisis in the Pharmaceutical Industry:
A P−ersonal Perspective

Sangtae Kim

Donald W. Feddersen Distinguished Professor

Purdue University

 

The “fruits of genomics”, as harvested from the first wave of bioinformatics tools, have been bittersweet from the perspective of the pharmaceutical industry. The significant increase in R&D expenditures since the transition to the “post genomic” era has been mirrored by declining output of novel therapeutic products and a corresponding decline in the reputation of companies in this industry. Will the pending transition to petascale cyberinfrastructure resources deliver at long last the promise from the computational advances of the post genomic era? To answer this, we consider the dynamic, data-driven computational paradigm and a reunion of the two branches of computational biology. We define “P+” vs. “P−” versions of “personalized” medicines and in that context map out a future role of informatics-driven, resized chemistry engines to restore the historical reputation of the innovation-based pharmaceutical industry.

Biographical Sketch

Sangtae “Sang” Kim is the inaugural Donald W. Feddersen Distinguished Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Distinguished Professor of Chemical Engineering at Purdue. The charter of the Feddersen Endowment targets emerging research opportunities at the interface of engineering and information technology. Dr. Kim’s experiences beyond the university campus spanned the public/government sector (NSF division director, cyber-infrastructure programs) and the private sector (VP of R&D IT for Warner Lambert, 1997-2000; and for Eli Lilly, 2000-03). From 1983-97, Dr. Kim was a faculty member in Chemical Engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he engaged in mathematical and computational methods for microhydrodynamics (now more commonly known as microfluidics). His computational insights into “hydrodynamic steering” (published in PNAS) played an influential role in 1994-95 in the development of fluidic self assembly (FSA), the dominant manufacturing process employed today for ultra low-cost RFID (radio frequency) tags. Dr. Kim is a member of the U.S. National Academy of Engineering and a fellow of the American Institute of Medical and Biological Engineers. His research citations include the 1993 Allan P. Colburn Award of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers, the 1992 Award for Initiatives in Research from the National Academy of Sciences and a Presidential Young Investigator award from NSF in 1985. His 1991 treatise, Microhydrodynamics, is considered a classic in that field and was recently selected by Dover Publications for its reprint series. A native of Seoul, but a product of the “K-11” public schools of Montreal, Dr. Kim received concurrent BSc and MSc degrees (1979) from Caltech and a PhD (1983) from Princeton.