What's New | Enlight Biosciences

Gaining An Edge in R&D

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Endra featured in The Economist

The Economist
New Models For New Technologies

Chemical & Engineering News

Lisa M. Jarvis

WITH NEW DRUG APPROVALS at their lowest level in 24 years, the late-stage pipeline looking anemic, and development costs soaring, pharmaceutical companies are looking high and low for ways to improve their odds of success. One recently launched collaboration, Enlight Biosciences, even has three drug companies working together toward that goal. The Boston-based company combines the investment prowess of the life sciences fund PureTech Ventures with the financial backing of Merck & Co., Eli Lilly & Co., and Pfizer.

The strategic collaboration, started this summer with a $39 million pool from the pharma companies, is focused on funding "enabling technologies" -- those scientific breakthroughs that fundamentally change the way research is done. Just as the polymerase chain reaction democratized genetics research by enabling any scientist to quickly and cheaply amplify a piece of DNA, Enlight is looking for ideas -- often developed outside the walls of big pharma -- that would transform drug development. Specifically, the company aims to find ways to reduce the level of ambiguity regarding a molecule's safety and efficacy when it is finally tested in humans.

Enlight has its roots in a conversation between Daphne Zohar, a founder and managing partner at PureTech, and Mervyn Turner, Merck's senior vice president of worldwide licensing and external development. While chatting about the need for new and better tools for drug discovery, as well as validation technologies, such as biomarkers, Turner bemoaned the lack of conventional venture funding for research tool companies, says Reid J. Leonard, Merck's executive director of licensing and external research.

"It was a kind of blue-sky discussion around, 'Gee, wouldn't it be great if there was a way to spur innovation in this space,' " Leonard explains. "The problem is that many things that could be incredibly impactful within pharma aren't being developed because of structural reasons within the venture capital community," adds David Steinberg, founding chief executive officer of and board member at Enlight. Meanwhile, with fewer new drugs reaching patients each year, not to mention some of the problems with safety that have emerged after drugs have been approved, big pharma is in desperate need of new tools to improve its R&D efforts. "It is an understatement to say there are some underlying issues with the way pharma R&D is being done right now," Steinberg says. "Things have to change, but no one is sure how yet."

In recent years drug companies have tried a number of creative approaches to tackling this problem, such as internal business incubators, internal venture funds, and entrepreneurial funds. Yet each approach has a builtin hurdle: the ability of the pharma company to operate entrepreneurially, Steinberg notes. In the case of internal incubators, for example, a project may run into the many layers of bureaucracy that already hinder research within pharma.

An idea came out of that discussion between Zohar and Turner: What if the primary customers -- the stakeholders in cutting-edge technology -- became strategic investors in a collaboration with the goal of getting those technologies out of academic labs and into development? "At the core it's a pretty simple concept of distributing the cost of investing in these technologies among the people who would be most likely to benefit from their commercialization," Leonard says.

And as Steinberg points out, big pharma doesn't have to do the "entrepreneurial heavy lifting" but can still have a tremendous influence over which projects get funded.

Thus, Enlight was born. The management of Enlight, composed primarily of PureTech executives, handles the nitty-gritty details of each investment. This group identifies promising technology within academia, evaluates whether the technology meets Enlight's criteria, works up proposals, and handles intellectual property issues. The ultimate goal is to form a spin-off company that Enlight helps set up with a leadership team. Alternatively, Enlight could financially nurture a new technology to a point that it is mature enough for a third party, like an instrument maker, to buy and commercialize.

The pharma partners, meanwhile, can influence the focus of investments and receive frequent updates on new opportunities to ensure that they fit into the overall model. When Enlight makes an investment, the pharma partners have the option to participate at various points in the venture. Not all of the companies have to be on board in order to get the venture rolling, but the goal is to find projects that benefit everyone.

SOME BROAD AREAS of interest for Enlight include imaging technologies; novel or improved technologies for the identification and validation of biomarkers; and new approaches to discovering, formulating, and delivering biotherapeutics such as proteins and peptides, monoclonal antibodies, and RNAbased drugs. "We're looking for technology that we really feel can be transformational to the industry," Steinberg says.

The sweet spot for Enlight is an idea that shows promise through early proof-of-principle work but would quickly benefit from funds to capture that next critical piece of validating data. "We are looking for enabling technology platforms that allow for quick hits, as well as big ideas," says PureTech Associate Jonathan Behr, who is also involved in Enlight.

That short time horizon doesn't have to be a commercial product, Behr says. Rather, he explains, pharma companies could benefit from a lot of different stages of product development, such as beta-testing a product or establishing a partnership to evaluate a platform technology.

Although its goal sounds ambitious -- finding a project ready to be tested in the lab within just two years -- the team seems confident in its ability to uncover promising technology and, as often as is needed, combine it with other intellectual property to help advance the work.

In fact, Enlight's first investment adheres to those principles. Endra, spun off this summer, is a molecular imaging company that was pieced together from the assets of a smaller company and technology from three universities. "We've brought together four or five pieces of IP under one umbrella to get this company started. It's something we've become good at," Steinberg notes.

The creation of Endra made sense on several fronts, the Enlight partners say. First, a critical unmet need exists in imaging, Steinberg says. "There's no real magic bullet," he says, noting that current instrumentation is good at one or two key aspects of imaging, but the ability to create real-time, high-resolution, highcontrast images deep in the body is lacking. Endra, meanwhile, has technology that will enable a tabletop small-animal imager to be rolled out sometime next year. The longer term "big idea," as Steinberg calls it, would be to advance the technology into human clinical applications.

Furthermore, Endra's technology is exactly the kind of tool that would be useful for drug development, but doesn't make sense for a pharma company to develop in-house. "This isn't the sort of thing Merck would be prepared to invest our own research dollars into because we're not in the instrument manufacturing business," Leonard says. But this partnership "allows us to put significant scientific input into the process and thereby materially impact the usability of the technology, and in a way where we're not diverting attention internally from our core mission."

Going forward, Enlight plans to start one to two projects per year, and the pharma partners have all signed on for a five-year stint. Enlight's management is also considering bringing one or two additional partners into the venture, which would benefit from the additional cash and perspective.
Big Pharma’s Road to Enlight(enment); continuing Bio-IT World coverage of Enlight

Bio-IT World

Kevin Davies and Vicki Glaser

In a novel and perhaps unprecedented model of big pharma cooperation, Merck, Pfizer, and Eli Lilly are jointly funding a new technology development company called Enlight Biosciences.

"This is totally new from everything I've seen," says acting CEO David Steinberg, a partner with PureTech Ventures. "There are other things that on the surface contain elements of this, but nothing that combines all the elements of all three pharmas working together on an ongoing basis to address precompetitive technology needs with a commercial incentive."

"I think it is very unique," agrees Merck's Reid Leonard, executive director of external research and licensing. "I can't personally think of another example but that doesn't mean there isn't one of a situation like this."

Of course, pharmas have participated in consortia such as the SNP consortium, but these are typically non-profit. "Participating from the beginning on the development of multiple technologies is not what you would typically see pharma companies coming together to do," Steinberg says.

Enlight is the idea of PureTech partner Daphne Zohar (see p. 6). Two years ago at a conference, she told a pharma executive that PureTech reviews hundreds of technology proposals each year, but the industry as a whole was more enamored of drugs and clinical assets. But if the VC industry didn't want to invest, maybe big pharma might, and thereby identify its unmet needs proactively.

PureTech, which has several senior partners with ties to Merck, brought the idea to Merck about two years ago. "We embraced it enthusiastically," says Leonard. "We were involved in working with them in setting up what the major areas of focus might be."

In creating Enlight, Merck, Lilly, and Pfizer share in the upfront investment as well as the early access to the future technologies. "Enlight is designed to be basically a virtual company that will start other companies, organizing information, identifying the needs of the pharmas, identifying technology opportunities, and getting the companies off the ground," says Steinberg. "The pharma partners will have an option to make an equity investment in each new company formed. That gives them certain strategic and financial rights, including the products developed."

Says Leonard: "The core operating principal around Enlight [is] to enable the development of technologies that are of genuine interest to a company like Merck or Pfizer or Lilly, but are not sufficiently enabling in terms of providing an immediate competitive advantage, that we would undertake their development by ourselves." Merck and the other founders badly want to benefit from early-stage technology, but the development of that technology per se is clearly not part of Merck's -- or any pharma's -- core business. Steinberg says he wasn't surprised the company came together. "I think there is a major, major unmet need -- a significant gap in technology development... We came up with a creative way of doing it that resonated, at least with these partners and potentially additional groups in the future.

Virtual Reality

Enlight is a semi-virtual company: most of the pieces are outsourced, but it will eventually have a physical headquarters. The research will take place with the inventors of the original technology and become more concrete in time. Its offices are temporarily co-located with PureTech in Boston.

According to Steinberg, the unmet needs Enlight is exploring in conjunction with its founding partners include "predictive models (prediction of tox, ADME, efficacy, other safety issues; in vivo, in vitro, or in silico); enabling platforms for discovery, development, and expression of biologics; biomarker discovery platforms -- look at multiplexed markers in a very sophisticated and high throughput way." Steinberg says each of these areas could yield multiple projects and companies. Other potential areas include drug formulation and delivery, as well as novel small molecule synthesis and production technologies and library screening. The first portfolio company, Endra, has an advanced program in non-invasive imaging and medical imaging.

"The timescale in which these spinout companies will be able to mature is much shorter [than traditional biotech companies]," says Enlight advisor Raju Kucherlapati, head of the Harvard Partners Center for Genetics and Genomics. "That's also very exciting for the pharma companies -- not only are they acquiring the technology but a very significant upside is that they have the opportunity to have a financial stake in their success."

The pharma partners will have a role "as strategic advisors to the selection of projects for Enlight, but we're not responsible for sourcing those projects," says Merck's Leonard. "The Enlight team is out scanning the academic technology space to identify programs within large areas that they've identified with our cooperation, as being areas where novel technology development could be of commercial interest, especially to pharma partners... They have the ongoing voice of the customer, plus they have access to technical opinion and expertise from the partners to help guide the development of the technologies."

Board Certified

Enlight's scientific advisory board is led by Nobel laureate Bob Horvitz (MIT). Steinberg says, "they are almost like co-founders [and have] a track record of actually making an impact in technology." Raju Kucherlapati previously co-founded Millennium Pharmaceuticals and Cell Genesys. Rakesh Jain (MGH) is an authority in angiogenesis, and Stanford's Sam Gambhir is an expert in molecular imaging and PET.

Steinberg says he was more surprised by the public reaction than that of pharma. "I think this really touched a nerve," he says. "I think this is a model that will evolve over time... This is the kind of thing that may yield other similar efforts and potentially become even more of a standard for the way pharma companies think about facilitating the development of technologies that will help them do their core business."

Since Enlight was announced in July, other pharmas have expressed interest in participating. Discussions are ongoing with several potential members, but Enlight wanted to announce the formation of the company with the core members. "We want to keep the size manageable to make sure we can do a good job for the partners involved. We will definitely be expanding the number of portfolio companies we start. Our goal is to start 1 to 2 of those per year," says Steinberg. That said, he cautions that, "things like Enlight are not going to start cropping up left and right because it is hard to do."

Facilitating collaboration among the pharma partners has been challenging, finding a mechanism to allow the partners to look at technologies in an open way. "We will very soon be having a cross-pharma summit in which they will be sharing ideas. Obviously they will not be bringing every secret to the table, but they are very open to it," says Steinberg. Enlight director Frank Douglas, former CSO Aventis, calls it a "safe haven," where participants are comfortable sharing ideas. Steinberg hopes Enlight will be able to take the founders' technology specifications "and deliver something they can integrate into a proprietary package, and that doesn't prevent the other partners from doing the same thing with their own independently developed compounds."

Enlight aims to profit on its commercial technologies or instrumentation for a pharma customer base. These will be areas with scant interest from the venture investing community to get those projects off the ground because, compared to a medical device or a therapeutic entity, they're less attractive. The founding partners will enjoy early access, but don't want to own them, says Steinberg.

From Merck's perspective, Leonard says the experiment will be a success if Enlight develops instrumentation or technology that Merck can purchase and integrate to accelerate drug discovery "and make better decisions on go/no-go projects... It's our expectation that the areas of interest will migrate according to the interests of the pharma partners. That's certainly a key driver to our participation and interest."

"We would never presume to be able to cover the scope and depth of innovation that's occurring outside our walls," says Leonard. "So we're trying to take a very focused and strategic approach to which areas make most sense for us to do ourselves, and which areas to do with other people. Enlight is just one more opportunity for us to leverage other people's innovations, especially in a space where the activities fall outside our core business."
Pharmas Partner in Venture Seeking Drug Discovery Tools

Nature Biotechnology
Merck Sheds Light on Enlight

Pharma Week

By Kevin Davies

August 1, 2008 | Bio-IT World | One of the more intriguing pharma deals in recent months is the formation of Enlight Biosciences, which is being jointly funded by three big pharma companies - Eli Lilly, Pfizer and Merck - and PureTech Ventures to the tune of $39 million. The focus is on precompetitive technology innovation, an unusual if not unique strategy for pharma companies starving for ways to invigorate their drug pipelines and develop and deliver safer, more effective drugs.

Reid Leonard, executive director of external research and licensing for Merck Research Laboratories in Boston, was one of the lead architects in securing Merck's participation with Enlight. He spoke to Kevin Davies about Enlight's formation and goals, and its broader significance for the biopharma industry.

Bio-IT World: Reid, what is Enlight Biosciences?

Leonard: Enlight Biosciences is a company with independent management and a Board that was established by PureTech Ventures. Merck, along with the two other pharma partners [Pfizer and Eli Lilly] are investors in the company. We have a role as strategic advisors to the selection of projects for Enlight, but we're not responsible for sourcing those projects. The Enlight team is out scanning the academic technology space to identify programs within large areas that they've identified with our cooperation, as being areas where novel technology development could be of commercial interest, especially to pharma partners.

The concept is that by getting the participation of the pharma companies early in the game, in terms of [getting these] ideas for technology development, and then importantly providing the partners with early access to the technology during its development, they hope to come up with technologies that best fit the needs of the industry. So they have the ongoing voice of the customer, plus they have access to technical opinions and expertise from the partners to help guide the development of the technologies.

Who conceived the idea of Enlight?

The concept for Enlight was developed by PureTech, but Merck was involved in the very early stages. There are several senior partners at PureTech who have connections to Merck. So we have an excellent relationship with PureTech. This is an idea they brought to us and we embraced enthusiastically a couple of years ago, and have been talking about for quite some time. As they were developing the business model, they would bring the concept back to us as a refresh and we were involved in working with them in setting up what the major areas of focus might be. Then they've gone out to other partners, and through a consensus process, they've reached the current state where they have three partners.

How unique is this precompetitive partnership in pharma?

I think it is very unique. I can't personally think of another example, but that doesn't mean there isn't one, of a situation like this. Because it's not a consortium -- Merck and other pharmas do join consortia in different areas -- but the idea of starting a for-profit enterprise with pharma companies as the sole limited partners or investors is unique as far as I'm aware.

Why share these potential technological innovations with other pharma competitors?

That's really the core operating principal around Enlight. It's to enable the development of technologies that are of genuine interest to a company like Merck or Pfizer or Lilly, but are not sufficiently enabling in terms of providing an immediate competitive advantage, that we would undertake their development by ourselves. That's part strategy and partly the fact that technology development per se is not within our core business. We use technology and we definitely want to have a voice determining which technologies become available sooner rather than later, but it's not our business to independently fund new imaging technologies. Because they're early stage, they remain risky and it would require substantial investment.

Who will be giving the strategic input to Enlight?

Presently Enlight has been dealing with its pharma partners in a radial fashion; I have a counterpart at each company. I've been Merck's primary scientific interface with Enlight, and it's been my job to coordinate input from Merck broadly in terms of our areas of interest. Take the imaging project, for example: as soon as the project was defined around a particular technology, I made an introduction for Enlight to the particular scientific and technical experts within Merck to define the desired performance criteria.

Were other pharma companies besides Lilly and Pfizer approached?

Enlight solicited interest from several companies, and my understanding is they still have discussions ongoing with several other potential members, but they wanted to announce the formation of the company with the core members who had signed on and committed to the program to date.

Where is the company going to be based?

The offices of Enlight are co-located with PureTech [in Boston]. The lab research is distributed, and that's part of the Enlight model. They're doing work in place with the inventors of the original technology. I don't know where they plan to consolidate the work on a given technology. It'll start with a virtual model and become more concrete over time.

What technologies and what area of the pipeline are you focusing on?

They have an advanced program in non-invasive imaging and medical imaging, which Enlight has itself already spun into another company, called Endra. Then they have earlier stage efforts going on around biologics, technologies for drug delivery and technologies around the broader area of biomarker discovery...

The goal is to bring forward a small number of projects each year consistent with the ability of the Enlight management team to pay attention to the programs. It's our expectation that the areas of interest will migrate according to the interests of the pharma partners. That's certainly a key driver to our participation and interest.

Doesn't Merck already place a premium on innovation? Is this a tacit admission that there's a lot more to do to match Merck's past success?

This Enlight endeavor is just one more example of the general migration Merck has made in the past 5-6 years in becoming a truly outwardly directed company. The goal is still leveraging Merck's internal technical excellence in order to identity and work with people outside who are on the cutting edge of their particular area of investigation. We would never presume to be able to cover the scope and depth of innovation that's occurring outside our walls. So we're trying to take a very focused and strategic approach to which areas make most sense for us to do ourselves, and which areas to do with other people. Enlight is just one more opportunity for us to leverage other people's innovations, especially in a space where the activities fall outside our core business.

How does Enlight intend to make money?

The business model for Enlight is specifically to develop technologies or instrumentation that can be commercialized for which the pharmaceutical industry is ideally the customer base. The idea for Enlight is there is money to be made in those sorts of technologies, but there's relatively little interest from the conventional venture investing community to get those projects off the ground because, compared to a medical device or a therapeutic entity, they're less attractive.

How will you know if this effort has been a success?

If there are technologies that come out of the Enlight process that result in an instrument that we can purchase or a technology that we can bring into our own labs to accelerate our drug discovery process and make better decisions on go/no-go projects. That will be a success for us.

We anticipate that the areas of focus will change over time. Obviously Enlight is trying to focus their activity on [technology] areas where the technology has matured to a point where it's worth investing. There may certainly be areas that may not be quite ready yet, but in five years, will end up being candidates.
Pharma gets friendly

The Scientist
The Path to Enlightenment

Nature News
Formation of Enlight Biosciences Topped Most-Read GenomeWeb Daily News

GenomeWeb Daily News

NEW YORK (GenomeWeb News) - Merck & Co., Pfizer, and Eli Lilly said today that they have partnered with PureTech Ventures to create a new firm called Enlight Biosciences that will focus on the development of new drugdiscovery technologies.

The three pharmas and PureTech have ponied up a total of $39 million that Enlight will direct toward "breakthrough technologies that can fundamentally alter drug discovery and development." Enlight is focused on "pre-competitive" technology that will "connect preclinical research, clinical development, and medical practice," according to a company statement.

The company noted that despite the recent emergence of "vital enabling technologies" such as PCR, PET, RNAi, and gene microarrays, "over the last few years most traditional life science investors have focused their funding on late-stage therapeutic programs."

As a result, Enlight said, "important technologies that could be of great strategic impact to the pharmaceutical industry are not being commercialized." Enlight said it has already begun technology-development programs in the areas of molecular imaging, biologics, and drug delivery, and is planning to launch programs in other areas.

The company's website lists a range of "areas of interest" under the categories of imaging and biomarkers, safety and toxicology, predictive models, chemistry and biochemistry, synthesis and production, formulation and delivery, and biologic platforms.

In the "biomarker" category, for example, Enlight is interested in developing "systems biology/multi-marker patterns, protein/antibody arrays, label-free binding assay methods, [and] platforms for patient segmentation."

Rod MacKenzie, senior vice president of Pfizer Global R&D, said in a statement that the effort should help develop "breakthrough technologies" that will enable innovation in biopharmaceutical science, which he described as "an urgent priority" for drug-makers.
Big Drugmakers Pool Resources, Creating New Company Built to Improve R&D

Xconomy.com

Luke Timmerman 7/10/08

Three of the world's biggest drugmakers can agree on this -- the research and development model for creating new drugs needs aserious kick in the rear. Pfizer, Merck, and Eli Lilly, through a collaboration hatched by Boston-based PureTech Ventures, have agreed to put $39 million into a new Boston company called Enlight Biosciences, whose job will be to create technologies that can enable researchers to make breakthrough drugs.

The venture has attracted very big names. The co-founders include Nobel Laureate H. Robert Horvitz, a biology professor at MIT, and Raju Kucherlapati, a genetics professor at Harvard Medical School who co-founded Millennium Pharmaceuticals and Abgenix. Enlight's team also includes a pair of PureTech partners with loads of drug industry experience: Frank Douglas, former chief scientific officer at Aventis, and Bennett Shapiro, former executive vice president of basic research and worldwide licensing at Merck.

Enlight's stated goal is to foster development of new technologies that can help the industry break out of its funk. Despite pumping tens of billions into research and development every year, including $44.5 billion last year according to an industry trade group, the pharmaceutical industry gets a lousy return on that investment. Only 19 new drugs were approved by the U.S. FDA last year, the fewest in 24 years. An estimated one out of every 10 drugs that enters clinical trials ever makes it through the gauntlet of tests to become a marketed product.

"The biopharmaceutical industry has a great need for innovative enabling technologies that will catalyze fundamental transformation of the drug discovery and development process," said Steven Paul, executive vice president of science and technology for Eli Lilly, in a statement. "A collaborative entrepreneurial initiative such as Enlight that is dedicated to such technological innovation in R&D meets that need in an ideal way."

Historical examples of what the founders see as enabling technologies are polymerase-chain reaction machines that do DNA analysis; genetic engineering techniques that use more human DNA than mouse DNA, and therefore make better-tolerated drugs; and RNA interference, or gene silencing technologies, that can attack a disease closer to its root cause.

"Going forward, the idea is to find the next RNAi," says Daphne Zohar, managing partner of PureTech and a board member of Enlight (as well as an Xconomist), who credits Merck senior vice president Mervyn Turner with really embracing the idea and in effect sponsoring the collaboration. "The idea is provide technologies that bridge across all the stages of drug discovery, development, and patient care, therefore reducing failure rate of drugs and increasing the probability that innovative new medicine can reach patients in a more capital-efficient way -- so that it actually eventually affects the cost of the medicines."

To that end, Enlight will specifically look at ways to better connect animal testing, human clinical trials, and real-world medical practice. Programs have already started in molecular imaging that can predict how humans respond to drugs, better formulations of biotechnology medicines and new drug delivery techniques, the company said.

One reason the drugmakers agreed to team up? Because venture capitalists aren't bankrolling as many breakthrough technologies that drugmakers can benefit from as they once did. The shift to investment in drug candidates in late stages of development means that "important technologies that could be of great strategic impact to the pharmaceutical industry are not being commercialized," Enlight said in its statement.
Enlight Biosciences Launched in Collaboration with Merck & Co., Inc., Pfizer, and Eli Lilly Pharmaceutical and Academic Luminaries Combine Forces to Address Innovation Bottleneck

Thursday

Boston, MA - July 10, 2008

Enlight Biosciences, a new Boston-based company conceived by PureTech Ventures together with several major pharmaceutical companies, announced today that it will direct up to $39M to advance breakthrough technologies that can fundamentally alter drug discovery and development. Enlight assembles unique innovative technologies in collaboration with its industry members. Merck & Co., Inc. (MRK), Pfizer Inc. (PFE), and Eli Lilly (LLY) are the founding members and as members, have the opportunity to invest in the development of these technologies.

Enlight was co-founded by PureTech Ventures and academic luminaries led by Dr. H. Robert Horvitz, Enlight's SAB Chair, Nobel Laureate, Howard Hughes Investigator, and Koch Professor of Biology at MIT; Dr. Sam Gambhir, Professor of Radiology, Chief of the Division of Nuclear Medicine, Stanford; Dr. Rakesh Jain, Cook Professor of Tumor Biology at MGH in the Harvard Medical School; and Dr. Raju Kucherlapati, co-founder of Millennium and Abgenix, Cabot Professor of Genetics at Harvard Medical School.

Enlight's team also includes leading drug developers, such as Dr. Frank Douglas, PureTech Ventures Partner, former Chief Scientific Officer and Executive Vice President of Aventis; and Dr. Bennett Shapiro, PureTech Ventures Partner, former Executive Vice President of Basic Research and Worldwide Licensing at Merck & Co., Inc.

"The biopharmaceutical industry has a great need for innovative enabling technologies that will catalyze fundamental transformation of the drug discovery and development process. A collaborative entrepreneurial initiative such as Enlight that is dedicated to such technological innovation in R&D meets that need in an ideal way. We are excited about our partnership with Enlight and its team of world-renowned scientists," stated Dr. Steven Paul, Executive Vice President, Science and Technology, Eli Lilly and Company and President, Lilly Research Laboratories.

Enlight is focused on technology that will connect preclinical research, clinical development, and medical practice. Enlight develops these technologies in a "pre-competitive" model to meet the needs of the consortium of Enlight founders, applying a variety of scientific approaches, including both traditional pharmaceutical company expertise and more entrepreneurial approaches. Enlight has already initiated programs in the areas of molecular imaging, biologics, and drug delivery and is planning to launch programs in other areas.

Enlight is focused on technology that will connect preclinical research, clinical development, and medical practice. Enlight develops these technologies in a "pre-competitive" model to meet the needs of the consortium of Enlight founders, applying a variety of scientific approaches, including both traditional pharmaceutical company expertise and more entrepreneurial approaches. Enlight has already initiated programs in the areas of molecular imaging, biologics, and drug delivery and is planning to launch programs in other areas.

Dr. Rod MacKenzie, Senior Vice President of Pfizer Global R&D, said "The need for breakthrough technologies that enable innovation in biopharmaceutical science is an urgent priority for all of us engaged in bringing new medicines to patients. Enlight Biosciences is a creative new venture with a team of world-leading scientists. We are pleased to partner with Enlight Biosciences in this exciting new business model."

Historical examples of vital enabling technologies include PCR, PET, antibody humanization and more recently RNAi and gene microarrays. Despite the importance of these technologies, over the last few years most traditional life science investors have focused their funding on late-stage therapeutic programs. As a consequence, important technologies that could be of great strategic impact to the pharmaceutical industry are not being commercialized.

"Enlight's strategy provides a means to apply emerging technologies that may enhance the probability of success in discovering and developing new medicines for patients," stated Dr. Mervyn J. Turner, Senior Vice President, Worldwide Licensing and External Research, Merck & Co., Inc. "Creative models such as this are important to the future success of our industry."

"At a time when there is concern over productivity in R&D, Enlight Biosciences is providing a safe haven where leaders in the pharmaceutical industry can develop tools that will accelerate innovation and delivery of novel drugs to patients," stated Dr. Frank Douglas.

Areas of interest include technologies that increase the ultimate likelihood of success of drugs that pass early development milestones (e.g., drug discovery, chemistry and synthesis platforms); technologies for early prediction of human response (e.g., predictive efficacy models, predictors of pharmacokinetics and toxicology); technologies that provide accurate readouts of both animal and human response to intervention (e.g., molecular imaging and biomarkers); and technologies that make promising chemical and biological compounds better suited to human treatment (e.g., formulation and drug delivery technologies).

Dr. Raju Kucherlapati said, "Enlight turns the standard approach to technology development on its head. Enlight starts with the most pressing unmet needs in the industry and works with industry and academic leaders to creatively address these needs, in contrast with the more typical technology-centric approach. That allows us to focus on the most critical problems facing the industry."

About Pfizer

Pfizer Inc, founded in 1849, is dedicated to better health and greater access to healthcare for people and their valued animals. Every day, approximately 90,000 colleagues in more than 150 countries work to discover, develop, manufacture and deliver quality, safe and effective prescription medicines to patients. www.pfizer.com

About Merck

Merck & Co., Inc. is a global research-driven pharmaceutical company dedicated to putting patients first. Established in 1891, Merck discovers, develops, manufactures and markets vaccines and medicines to address unmet medical needs. The company devotes extensive efforts to increase access to medicines through far-reaching programs that not only donate Merck medicines but help deliver them to the people who need them. Merck also publishes unbiased health information as a not-for-profit service. Additional information about Merck is available at www.merck.com

About Eli Lilly

Lilly, a leading innovation-driven corporation, is developing a growing portfolio of first-in-class and best-in-class pharmaceutical products by applying the latest research from its own worldwide laboratories and from collaborations with eminent scientific organizations. Headquartered in Indianapolis, Ind., Lilly provides answers -- through medicines and information -- for some of the world's most urgent medical needs. Additional information about Lilly is available at www.lilly.com

About Enlight

Enlight is a Boston-based company established in partnership with major pharmaceutical companies to develop breakthrough innovations that will fundamentally alter drug discovery and development. Enlight was founded by PureTech Ventures and a team of industry leaders and academic luminaries. Enlight proactively addresses critical unmet industry needs with innovations drawn from academic laboratories, startups, and ideas generated internally by the Enlight team. Contact: David Steinberg, Founding CEO Enlight Biosciences, Senior Principal, PureTech Ventures. [email protected] www.enlightbio.com

About PureTech Ventures

PureTech Ventures is a Boston-based venture creation firm specializing in translating breakthrough research from top tier academic institutions into therapies that will impact human health. PureTech's Partners include entrepreneurs and leaders from the top echelon of pharma, biotech and academia including Dr. Ronald Cape (founder, Cetus), Dr. Robert Langer (renowned MIT professor), Dr. Frank Douglas (former Chief Scientific Officer, Aventis), Dr. Bennett Shapiro (former EVP Worldwide Basic and External Research, Merck), Dr. John Zabriskie (former CEO Pharmacia & Upjohn), and Daphne Zohar (PureTech Founder and Managing Partner). www.PureTechVentures.com
Pfizer, Merck, Lilly Form Drug-Discovery Venture

Bloomberg

By Lisa Rapaport

July 10 (Bloomberg) -- Pfizer Inc., Merck & Co. and Eli Lilly & Co., along with a Boston-based venture capital firm, are pooling $39 million to start a research-based company aimed at speeding the discovery of new kinds of medicines.

The three drugmakers and the investment firm, PureTech Ventures LLC, formed Enlight Biosciences LLC, of Boston. H. Robert Horvitz, a Nobel Prize winner from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is the co-founder of Enlight.

Enlight will focus on an area of research often avoided by academics: the creation of new tools to better identify which drug candidates may succeed in human trials. The goal is to avoid failures late in drug development, such as Pfizer's cholesterol pill torcetrapib and Lilly's AIR insulin inhaler, both abandoned after side effects emerged in large human trials.

"There have been a lot of technologies rolled out in recent years, like genomics and high throughput screening, that have yet to have a major impact on success rates in drug development," said Les Funtleyder, an analyst with Miller Tabak & Co. in New York, in a telephone interview today. ``There's no magic bullet here, but it's a relatively modest investment to try something new and see if it pans out."

New York-based Pfizer, the world's biggest drugmaker, rose 17 cents to $18.20 at 9:31 a.m. in New York Stock Exchange composite trading. Merck, of Whitehouse Station, New Jersey, rose 37 cents, or 1 percent, to $37.43. Indianapolis-based Lilly rose 40 cents to $48.77.

Clinical Trials

As part of the joint venture, researchers will try to find ways to make sure drugs will succeed in clinical trials, develop tools to predict human responses, and come up with techniques, such as imaging and biomarkers, that provide accurate readouts of both animal and human response.

"This novel collaboration has the potential to provide Merck with a creative means to harness academic innovation as a means to improve the probability of success for our winners while ensuring that our unsuccessful candidates are identified earlier rather than later," said Mervyn Turner, a senior vice president at Merck, in an e-mailed statement today.

Companies in the partnership may use any technology or tests developed to refine experimental drugs in their own labs, said Daphne Zohar, the managing partner of PureTech, in an e-mail interview today. In addition, Enlight is "in active discussions with other pharmaceutical company members" and "may partner with other venture firms as programs develop and require additional funding."

Zohar declined to disclose financial terms of the partnership.

"Instead of working separately to attack the same problems such as productivity and drug failures, combining forces enables these companies to make a bigger dent and come up with creative solutions to help the industry broadly, as well as their own internal efforts,'' Zohar said. ``By reducing the failure rate they will also cut the ultimate cost of bringing innovative new medicines to patients."
Big Pharmas Join to Speed Discoveries; continued coverage on Forbes.com, CNBC, and more

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