Lessons learned in building alliances

Ambreen Farook, senior director, alliance management and program lead at Halozyme Therapeutics, provides an Expert View on the dos and don'ts of biopharmaceutical industry partnerships.

While strategic partnerships can streamline the process of bringing therapeutics to market, thereby creating value for both companies, relationship success does not always come easily. In alliance partnerships, relationships must be engaging and collaborative, with both entities sharing complementary knowledge, focusing on strengths, proactively determining risks, and acknowledging successes. By doing so, the alliance can create value and competitive advantage that would be challenging to achieve independently. Even more so, as partnerships continue to expand and progress, they require higher levels of collaboration and consistent commitment by both organizations. As our relationship and partnership have evolved over the years, we have focused on five key attributes that maximize efficiency and productivity.

Throughout the last 13 years, Roche (ROG: SIX) and Halozyme Therapeutics (Nasdaq: HALO) have built a strong alliance with a singular vision – to bring therapies to market that have a meaningful impact on patients by leveraging each company’s unique capabilities. What started as a single collaboration on formulation development and delivery has been expanded multiple times, resulting in multiple drug product launches, with more anticipated in the future.