Next20 Launched as Healthcare Thought Partnership Firm
Trending now: Senior pharmaceutical industry executives establish new company and business model.
Three highly experienced pharmaceutical and healthcare industry executives have formed next20, a new “thought
partnership," which provides strategic support to help healthcare and pharmaceutical companies of all sizes identify and fully leverage revenue opportunities.
Next20 is led by Managing Partners Eric Sirota, who formerly worked as chief operating officer for Optimer Pharmaceuticals; Ian Henry, former head of marketing and communications at Otsuka America; and Margie Kuo, who worked as head of U.S. commercial for Pfizer Integrated Health.
Mr. Sirota, Mr. Henry, and Ms. Kuo, with long careers in large, midsized, and small pharmaceutical and healthcare businesses, have managed portfolios and products for investment, development, prelaunch, and successful commercialization across multiple therapy areas.
Next20 provides pharmaceutical and healthcare companies the opportunity to challenge conventional wisdom 
and benefit from a diversity of perspectives to address issues, explore options, identify hidden value, and develop implementable commercialization strategies.
Next20 recognizes that it is relatively easy for most companies to get the first 80% in terms of identifying key issues, opportunities, and business fundamentals.
Company leaders believe that what separates real success from mediocre performance is a deep analysis and understanding of a business situation, the ability to identify the next level of insights to unlock a company or product’s full potential, and partners with the experience, collaborative approach and independence to help realize the “next20."
“Value is about building on the obvious and adding the meaningful," Mr. Sirota says. “Among the things that make us different is the way we partner with clients to maximize the value of their asset by optimizing decision-making at key inflection points across the product, portfolio, or company lifecycle."
Parexel Simplifies Patient Recruitment and Study Startup Timelines Through Site Alliance Network
Parexel International, a global biopharmaceutical services provider, is expanding its clinical trial site alliance network, an extensive network of investigator sites and site management organizations (SMOs) that enables the company to quickly access and enroll patient populations for clients’ clinical trials worldwide.
Patient recruitment is one of the most significant clinical trial challenges. Difficulties in patient enrollment delay 81% of clinical trials one to six months, with another 5% postponed six months or more.
To address this challenge, Parexel developed its site alliance network, currently consisting of more than 180 members plus several SMOs, together providing access to about 6,000 investigators worldwide.
The site management organizations alone have a combined database of 7.5 million patients in more than 25 countries.
The network’s size and scope enable faster patient recruitment, evaluation, and enrollment in clinical trials; foster greater collaboration between Parexel and sites on behalf of clients; and ensure quality across multiple sites.
Janssen Launches Three New Research Platforms Focused on Redefining Healthcare
Janssen Research & Development, one of the Janssen Pharmaceutical Companies of Johnson & Johnson, has launched three new research platforms focused on disease prevention, disease interception, and the microbiome — areas of transformational medical innovation that are expected to change the healthcare landscape.
The new teams collaborate closely with Janssen’s five therapeutic areas as well as external partners to underpin ongoing research and propel scientific knowledge in these areas of significant potential to change the way diseases are managed.
“The future of healthcare will increasingly depend on identifying and correctly interpreting the earliest signals of disease susceptibility, preventing or intercepting disease before it even begins, and using the latest scientific insights from promising, emerging fields like the microbiome, to transform medicine," says William N. Hait, M.D., Ph.D., global head of Janssen Research & Development.
“By advancing science in these areas, our new research platforms will strive to deliver the next generation of transformational medical innovation. We believe the positive impact on people, communities, governments, medicine and the global economy will be dramatic and far-reaching," Dr. Hait continues.
The Janssen Prevention Center (JPC) focuses on the prevention of chronic, non-communicable diseases (NCDs) such as Alzheimer’s, heart disease, cancer, and autoimmune diseases, which increasingly impact aging populations and burden healthcare systems globally.
“To make a difference in these and other major areas of unmet medical need, our goal is to identify and research innovative solutions to extend people’s healthy life span and compress morbidity," says Jaap Goudsmit, Ph.D., global head, Janssen Prevention Center.
With headquarters in the Netherlands, JPC has laboratories in the Netherlands (Leiden), the United States (La Jolla, Calif.), and the United Kingdom (London). (PV)
