Consulting

Enabling teams to deliver breakthrough R&D performance improvement at leading biotech innovators

Kummer Consulting helps R&D organizations succeed by focusing on delivering innovation value. This new approach visualizes R&D as advancing knowledge on how to deliver therapeutic benefits, rather than just advancing candidates. Rigorous experimental cycles generate data to drive decisions:

  • Build hypotheses about chances that treatment will succeed
  • Design sound experiments
  • Execute experiments with tools fit-for-purpose
  • Generate robust, interpretable data
  • Rigorous quantitative analysis to reduce risk
  • Boost certainty about chances treatment will succeed
  • Apply knowledge to decisions.
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RESULTS ACHIEVED

Strategic Planning

Working with subject matter experts in a variety of disciplines, wrote narrative that clearly articulated the key issues facing discovery teams in all therapeutic areas making the transition from Discovery to Development. This synthesis enabled management and functional departments to develop a new approach.

Evaluating and Prioritizing Studies

Orchestrated work sessions with multiple functional organizations, scientific advisors, executives, and investors, enabling company to design, budget, and choose the best study sequence to test the key hypotheses for a protein replacement therapy in a poorly characterized degenerative disease.

Identifying and Clarifying Value of Targets

Leading biotech had been unable for years to decide on the indication for a novel therapeutic agent, with separate camps (including a big pharma partner) arguing for their own strategies. Worked with team leader to organize the findings to date and distill the scientific questions. Planned communication flow that engaged each faction productively. Designed series of sessions to explore the issues with internal and external experts. Company learned of new approaches that enabled them to quickly assess the likelihood of success for each indication.

Metrics Design

Taught team leaders a risk-adjusted financial valuation method to identify the key drivers of value for decisions on whether to pursue new indications for recently approved therapy. Created template for budgeting and financial analysis that enabled team to identify the key uncertainty that, once resolved, would determine value inflection point.

Global R&D Decision-Making

Interviewed key global players attempting to integrate drug development efforts across geographies and organizations to identify critical issues. Designed and facilitated two-day workshop for 50, where we diagnosed root causes of dysfunction, created new relationships, and enabled disparate groups to build on each other’s work.