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Millennium Pharmaceuticals

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ounded in 1993 and headquartered in Cambridge, Mass., Millennium
Pharmaceuticals is a leading biopharmaceutical company focused on the discovery and development of small molecules, biotherapeutics, and predictive medicine products.
The unmasking of the genome has provided enormous opportunities in drug discovery. Millennium is harnessing this knowledge by focusing on three strategies: major focus on personalized medicine and productivity, a growing and sustainable pipeline of breakthrough products, and a unique approach to creating value for shareholders through business leadership.
Millennium focuses on four major therapeutic areas: oncology, metabolic diseases, cardiovascular conditions, and inflammation. Prior to its recent purchase of COR, revenue was primarily from R&D alliances with such pharmaceutical companies as Bayer and American Home Products. Increasingly, Millennium is looking to provide shareholder value through products on the market (e.g.,
INTEGRILIN® (eptifibatide) Injection peak sales are projected to exceed $500 million) and a deep, sustainable pipeline. The company hopes to shift medical care from addressing symptoms to tackling the root causes of disease. Millennium is also striving to leverage knowledge to create patient management services.
The pharmaceutical industry faces tall productivity challenges such as reduced R&D productivity, reliance on blockbuster drugs, and increased therapeutic competition. In short, it is becoming more expensive to develop fewer products.
Millennium, like most pharmaceuticals, is in a constant race with competition to be the first to market with new drug discoveries. For Millennium to take a drug from biology through chemistry to development takes an average of 14 years and costs
$880 million. Costs and competition will continue to increase as Millennium incorporates new technologies for discovery. Planning for an increased number of target markets, a higher percentage of unprecedented targets, and new technologies will require significant capital.

Using Knowledge Management to Drive Innovation • ©2003 APQC

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KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT AND INNOVATION PRACTICES

Millennium’s approach and business model is firmly grounded in knowledge management and innovation. Leveraging strengths, the company’s approach calls for an integrated and comprehensive industrialized platform with a focus on cost, quality, and cycle time. Figure 15 details Millennium’s Gene to Patient (G2P) productivity platform.

The Millennium G2P Productivity Platform

Chips

Proteomics

Gene/Target
Identification

Imaging

Target
Validation

Fluidics

Lead
Identification

Structure

Lead OP
Preclinical

Predictive
ADMET

Clinical
Trials

CDU

SNP

Commercial and Patient
Management

Process Development/Manufacturing
Biology
Markers
Chemistry
Computational Biology

Process

Platform

Chemical Genetics
Computational Chemistry

Knowledge Management

Pathopharmacology

Pharmacogenomics

Patient
Management

Bottlenecks

Figure 15

The integrated G2P productivity platform is fundamental to Millennium’s ability to revolutionize the drug discovery process. This process starts with a gene or target identification and integrates processes, tools, technologies, and people that enable the discovery and development process to become more efficient. This is achieved through large-scale knowledge management efforts where information is continuously shared up and down the process through feedback loops. Millennium takes this information and focuses on the major bottlenecks in the process (e.g., target validation, preliminary clinical trials, and clinical development). Through this process, Millennium has been able to target areas that are responsible for almost 50 percent of drug development failures.
Millennium notes that the advantages of an integrated platform are more than just a vision for