Pfizer 2011 Annual Review | Pfizer: the world's largest research-based pharmaceutical company

Partnering to Expand R&D Impact

Pfizer is a leader, but we do not act alone. More and more, we are collaborating with peer firms, research organizations, leading academics, global health organizations, governments and patient groups to speed new medicines and vaccines to the people who need them.

In fact, we work with more than 250 R&D partner organizations. To increase the success of our partnerships, we are placing our R&D groups in the mainstream of the world's greatest science and technology hubs, from Cambridge, U.K. to La Jolla, California. This is strategic—and key to our efforts to strengthen Pfizer's position as a leading biomedical innovator.

Centers for Therapeutic Innovation

One of Pfizer's newest partnerships, The Centers for Therapeutic Innovation (CTI), represents a new approach to biopharmaceutical R&D. A groundbreaking, open-innovation network, CTI's four Centers in Boston, New York City, San Francisco and San Diego are partnered with many of the country's leading academic medical institutions. Our goal is to bridge the gap between early scientific discovery and its translation into new medicines.

A key aspect of CTI is Pfizer's commitment to establish local Centers that enable Pfizer and academic medical center teams to blend the research expertise of academics in disease, targets and patient populations with Pfizer's developmental expertise and resources. This model puts our scientists to work side by side with those of our CTI partners.

Pfizer funds preclinical and clinical development programs, offers equitable intellectual property and ownership rights, and broad rights to publication, and provides unprecedented access to its antibody libraries and other proprietary technologies. In exchange, Pfizer obtains access to many novel targets and hypotheses, and an opportunity to accelerate the translation of important new discoveries to the clinic.  CTI's collaborative and entrepreneurial business model has the potential to improve our R&D productivity, and broaden and diversify our pipeline with next generation therapeutics.

In its first year, CTI has built a portfolio of 16 projects in a variety of disease areas. Our goal to advance three programs to proof of mechanism by 2014 is within reach.

Eliquis – A Profile in Partnered Drug Development

Showing what we can accomplish through external partnerships within our industry, Eliquis (apixaban) has been approved in Europe for the prevention of venous thromboembolism following elective hip or knee replacement surgery, and is under EU, Japanese and U.S. FDA review for stroke prevention in patients with atrial fibrillation. An oral anticoagulant, Eliquis has shown in clinical trials to be superior in efficacy, safety and mortality to warfarin, the 50-year-old standard of care.

Eliquis is a new oral direct Factor Xa inhibitor, a class of agents being studied for their potential to prevent and treat blood clots, and was discovered by Bristol-Myers Squibb. In 2007, Pfizer and Bristol-Myers Squibb entered into a worldwide collaboration to develop and commercialize Eliquis. This global alliance combines Bristol-Myers Squibb's strengths in cardiovascular drug development and commercialization with Pfizer's global scale and vast expertise in this field.